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People with color blindness may have more difficulty identifying an early sign of bladder cancer, making them more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage.
Could being color blind reduce the chances of surviving bladder cancer? This is the surprising hypothesis that researchers proposed based on a study last week in Nature Health.
The research analyzed data from 135 patients with bladder cancer and color blindness and compared these patients with 135 patients with bladder cancer alone. The data was taken from TriNetX, an international registry of electronic clinical records for more than 275 million patients.
Among these health records, the People who simultaneously had color blindness and a diagnosis of bladder cancer had shorter survival times than bladder cancer patients without this visual impairment.
As detailed by , in general, individuals with color blindness had a 52% higher risk of dying within 20 years of being diagnosed with bladder cancer, compared with the group with normal vision.
The study authors suggested a plausible reason for this observed difference: the Color blindness can make it difficult to identify blood in urine — an early sign of cancer — thus delaying the diagnosis.
The importance of diagnosis
Blood in the urine is one of the most common early symptoms of bladder cancer, along with frequent urination; pain or burning when urinating; feeling of need to urinate even when the bladder is not full; and urinate often at night.
If someone detects blood in their urine, they should consult a doctor immediately.
However, as the study authors suggested, the Inability to clearly distinguish red from yellow can make it very difficult to identify this early warning sign.
Color blindness, also known as color vision deficiency, is a relatively common condition, with a recent report indicating that around 1 in 40 people worldwide have some form of color vision deficiency. Color vision deficiency tends to be more common in men than women, according to the same research.
It is important to highlight that the data from the current study are not sufficient to prove that color blindness has delayed the diagnosis of the disease, as it is, for now, just a hypothesis.
