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. 2019 Jul 12;19(1):684.
doi: 10.1186/s12885-019-5902-z.

Sexual dimorphism in the incidence of human cancers

Daoshan Zheng  1 , Justyna Trynda  1 , Cecilia Williams  2 , Jeremy A Vold  3 , Justin H Nguyen  4 , Denise M Harnois  4 , Sanjay P Bagaria  4 , Sarah A McLaughlin  4 , Zhaoyu Li  5
Affiliations

Sexual dimorphism in the incidence of human cancers

Daoshan Zheng et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: Sex differences in the incidences of cancers become a critical issue in both cancer research and the development of precision medicine. However, details in these differences have not been well reported. We provide a comprehensive analysis of sexual dimorphism in human cancers.

Methods: We analyzed four sets of cancer incidence data from the SEER (USA, 1975-2015), from the Cancer Registry at Mayo Clinic (1970-2015), from Sweden (1970-2015), and from the World Cancer Report in 2012.

Results: We found that all human cancers had statistically significant sexual dimorphism with male dominance in the United States and mostly significant in the Mayo Clinic, Sweden, and the world data, except for thyroid cancer, which is female-dominant.

Conclusions: Sexual dimorphism is a clear but mostly neglected phenotype for most human cancers regarding the clinical practice of cancer. We expect that our study will facilitate the mechanistic studies of sexual dimorphism in human cancers. We believe that fully addressing the mechanisms of sexual dimorphism in human cancers will greatly benefit current development of individualized precision medicine beginning from the sex-specific diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.

Keywords: Cancer incidence; Human cancers; Sexual dimorphism.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The yearly incidence ratios of men to women in the SEER data (red line), the Swedish data (blue line), and the World Cancer Report 2012 data (green circle). *, the incidence ratios were infinite because of no incidence in women for certain years
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The yearly SEER (red) and Sweden (blue) age-adjusted incidence rates of sex-dimorphic cancers in 1975–2015. The age-adjusted standardized incidence rates (ASR) are per 100,000 and are age-adjusted to the World Standard population. Men, solid line; women; dot line
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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