Here are a couple of other facts: 1. Autoimmune diseases are more common in women 2. The immune system kills tumor cells
Also something I learned recently: Pregnancy suppresses the immune system.
Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
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Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#32More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
Any facts to back that up? The story I hear more often [1] is the other way around. More men in medical studies, more often male animals in studies etc.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#33More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
If you're interested in the history of cancer, I can't recommend The Emperor Of All Maladies highly enough: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003UYUP58/
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#34More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
The breast cancer movement was started because at the time, male-only cancers (such as prostate and testicular cancers) were getting far more funding and research, while breast cancer was essentially being ignored despite being at least an order of magnitude more common.
That it's more common has probably made it easier to do research on once it gained sufficient visibility and funding.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#35Because men receive worse medical treatment. Just compare how prostate and breast cancer are promoted. It also corresponds with other statistics like life expectancy, medical expenses, disposable income...
On the flip side, studies have shown that women are less likely to be taken seriously when bringing a medical concern or complaint to a doctor. Which might suggest that women are under-diagnosed compared to men.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then Cancer should be more common in women, isn't?
Presumably the same mechanism which makes the immune response more effective against cancers makes autoimmune diseases more common. Similarly, some influenza strains are particularly deadly to healthy people, though they are killed by their own hyperactive immune response.
>> Presumably the same mechanism which makes the immune response more effective against cancers makes autoimmune diseases more common.
That seems like a reasonable hypothesis.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#37... and because men have more cells in their body and so more tickets for the cancer lottery.
If this increased cancer rates, whales should be completely consumed by cancer at a young age. However, there are few cases of whales being found to die of cancer.
Humans have a "tumour suppressor gene" called p53 which helps reduce the occurrence of cancers. Elephants (not quite whale size, but still pretty big!) have been shown to simultaneously express 20 variants of p53 which is thought to (at least partially) account for the lack of an expected increase in incidences of tumours given their sheer number of cells.
Further reading: http://www.nature.com/news/how-elephants-avoid-cancer-1.1853...
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#38So is the second X chromosome in women supposed to be an exact copy of the first or do they differ? That's fascinating to me all by itself, and more so that some genes in the dupe can reinforce the first even though the rest of the chromosome is suppressed.
EDIT: Ah, wikipedia explains that the two X chromosomes in a standard-issue woman come from the mother and paternal grandmother, and then ... "Early in embryonic development in females, one of the two X chromosomes is randomly and permanently inactivated in nearly all somatic cells (cells other than egg and sperm cells). This phenomenon is called X-inactivation or Lyonization, and creates a Barr body. If X-inactivation in the somatic cell meant a complete de-functionalizing of one of the X-chromosomes, it would ensure that females, like males, had only one functional copy of the X chromosome in each somatic cell. This was previously assumed to be the case. However, recent research suggests that the Barr body may be more biologically active than was previously supposed." Which must be related to the EXITS that the OP refers to.
Being a male, I'm troubled by the fitness of the Y-chromosome over the generations. It seems to me that it can only accumulate errors and mutations. However, I suppose the same could be said about the mitochondria that come exclusively from females. This partial double-X scheme seems like a useful way of mixing up traits intrageneration and maybe strengthen healthful cell behaviors.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#39Shows just how much change can come from genetic tech. Nature's source code.
Re: Why Is Cancer More Common in Men?
#40More money is spent on preventing cancer in women in treatment, research, and preventive medicine. Google the history of the brca gene, research and tests around it. Its quite amazing.I hope all cancer research gets the pipeline it got.
If this is talking about a prostate vs breath cancer dichotomy. The reason is prostate cancer kills much older men than breast cancer kills women. Women in their 40s routinely die of breast cancer but that's pretty rare for a man in his 40s to die of prostate cancer.
So saving a man's live fron prostate cancer means he dies at 75 instead of 70 and but saving a women's from breast cancer means she dies at 65 instead of 45.