Women more likely to survive melanoma than men
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Women diagnosed with melanoma are more likely to survive the skin cancer than men and less likely to have it recur, according to a new study.
The researchers suggest that biological differences between the sexes might influence how the body deals with the cancer, although a definitive explanation for women’s better outcomes remains uncertain. The findings support earlier research showing that women are less likely to die from melanoma, the deadliest of the skin cancers.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 21 out of every 100,000 people are diagnosed with melanoma each year, and close to three out of 100,000 will die of the disease. “Once somebody has melanoma we absolutely believe that men and women deal with it differently, in general,” said Dr. Vernon Sondak, chair of the department of Cutaneous Oncology at Moffitt Cancer Center and a professor at the University of South Florida College of Medicine in Tampa, who was not involved in this study.
