Frequent blood donation lowers cancer risk: Study

NEW YORK: Frequent blood donation is not harmful to your health, a new study confirms.

"No one should worry that giving blood causes cancer," Dr Gustaf Edgren of the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health. "If anything, blood donation may actually be good for you."

People who donate blood show lower cancer and mortality rates than their non-donating peers, Edgren and his colleagues note in their report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Association, but the fact that blood donors tend to be healthier overall could mask any ill effects of frequent donation.