It's Not a Man's World After All

These findings start to establish a biological framework for the gender disparity in melanoma outcomes.

Men have a significantly higher risk for melanoma, and two-thirds of melanoma deaths in the U.S. occur in men, but no convincing biological explanations for this phenomenon have been established.

Sameer and colleagues sought to identify gender differences in genomic data for melanoma. In 266 patients, men had 1.85 times as many mutations in their melanomas as women (298 vs. 211.5). Melanoma was unique among 20 cancers profiled in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, in having a gender disparity in mutational load. When the investigators separated melanomas as high-mutational-load tumors versus low-mutational-load tumors, they found a consistently better survival in both sexes associated with…

Reviewing Author

Kenneth Y. Tsai, MD, PhD

Disclosures

Grant / Research support American Association for Cancer Research – Landon Foundation; National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute; Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas

Editorial BoardsJournal of the American Academy of Dermatology

Kenneth Y. Tsai, MD, PhD

Disclosures

Grant / Research support American Association for Cancer Research – Landon Foundation; National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute; Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas

Editorial BoardsJournal of the American Academy of Dermatology

It's Not a Man's World After All

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Reviewing Author