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. 2024 Dec 24:5:104172.
doi: 10.1016/j.bas.2024.104172. eCollection 2025.

Do clinical outcomes in individuals with malignant gliomas differ between sexes?

Maria Goldberg  1 , Laura-Sophie Frank  2 , Ghaith Altawalbeh  1 , Chiara Negwer  1 , Arthur Wagner  1 , Jens Gempt  3 , Bernhard Meyer  1 , Amir Kaywan Aftahy  1
Affiliations

Do clinical outcomes in individuals with malignant gliomas differ between sexes?

Maria Goldberg et al. Brain Spine. .

Abstract

Introduction: Sex-related differences in the epidemiology of malignant gliomas are acknowledged; however, information regarding their clinical characteristics and outcomes after surgery is limited.

Research question: To identify sex-specific differences of all patients with high-grade glioma at our institution and assessed clinical outcomes and prognostic factors.

Material and methods: This single-center study included those who underwent surgery for malignant gliomas between 2010 and 2020. Categorical, normally distributed, and skewed continuous variables were compared between men and women using the chi-square test, independent samples t-test, and Mann-Whitney U test, respectively. Survival was calculated using the log-rank and Kaplan-Meier methods.

Results: In total, 621 patients with WHO grade IV gliomas were identified (370 (59.58%) male). Men were significantly younger, underwent surgery faster after imaging diagnosis, and had a slightly higher surgical complications incidence than women. Women reported a worse preoperative performance status. Multivariate analysis showed that sex did not affect survival, surgical complications, nicotine or alcohol abuse, or preoperative tumor volume. Age, Karnofsky performance status, neurosurgical resection, and adjuvant radiotherapy with temozolomide showed a survival advantage.

Discussion and conclusions: Men are diagnosed with malignant glioma at a younger age than women; however, no advantage in clinical outcomes was observed. No sex-related differences were observed.

Keywords: Anaplastic oligodendroglioma; Diffuse astrocytoma; Gliosarcoma; High-grade glioma; Sex differences.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Age distribution at the time of diagnosis.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Preoperative and postoperative performance status.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Overall survival after surgery.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Percentage of surgical complications.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Survival after adjuvant radio- and chemotherapy.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Time to recurrence.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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