Men over 40 who are plagued with the omnipresent dread of generalized anxiety disorder are more than twice as likely to die of cancer than are men who do not have the mental affliction, new research finds. But for women who suffer from severe anxiety, the research found no increased risk of cancer death.

That finding, presented last week at the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology’s Congress in Vienna, emerges from the largest study ever to explore a link between anxiety and cancer. It tracked 15,938 Britons over 40 for 15 years.

Even after researchers took account of factors that boost the risk of cancer, including age, alcohol consumption, smoking and chronic diseases, men with a diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder were 2.15 times as likely to die of cancer than were those with no such diagnosis.

Generalized anxiety disorder — a condition marked by excessive, uncontrollable worry about many areas of life — affected women more commonly than it did men. Among women in the large cohort studied, 2.4 percent suffered from the disorder. Among men in the cohort, 1.8 percent did.