Early sexual experience is somehow linked with increased risk of cervical cancer. This impression —now holding unshakable status for some clinicians and totally rejected by others—gained support in three recent studies.
The investigators—a Baltimore sociologist, a Detroit clinician, and an Oakland geneticist-epidemiologist—differed on conclusions to be drawn from their data.
But all found that cervical cancer occurred significantly more frequently in women who experienced coitus earlier than matched controls.
Marital instability producing an increased number of sexual partners was the key epidemiological factor seen by Clyde E. Martin, PhD. The pattern: early intercourse, correlated with early marriage, leading to broken marriage and a variety of sexual contacts.
This hypothesis resulted from a study in which 40 Jewish women with invasive or in situ squamous cell carcinoma were compared to 36 other Jewish women who had a hysterectomy for reasons other than uterine cancer. Jewish women have been found in several