Womanisers may now have a lame excuse! A Canadian study has revealed that men who have sex with multiple partners are less likely to get prostrate cancer.

Men who had sex with more than 20 women had a 28% reduced risk of being diagnosed with the disease, whereas those who had less partners didn't fare as well.

Large numbers of ejaculations may reduce the concentration of cancer-causing substances in prostatic fluid, a constituent of semen, the study noted.

This would mean frequent masturbation would also reduce your likelihood of catching the deadly disease, the metro.co.uk reported citing the study.

In the case of gay man, however, the opposite is true. Hence, such people should not strive for multiple partners since doing so would double the risk of prostate cancer.

The Prostate Cancer and Environment Study involved 3,208 men and answered questions about their lifestyle and sex lives, the report said.

"It is possible that having many female sexual partners results in a higher frequency of ejaculations, whose protective effect against prostate cancer has been previously observed in cohort studies," lead researcher Marie-Elise Parent, from the University of Montreal, said.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology.