ABOVE: Glioblastoma, a brain cancer, is much more common in men than in women. WIKIMEDIA COMMONS, NEPHRON
More than half of neurooncologist Josh Rubin’s pediatric brain cancer patients over his 25-year career have been boys. Rubin’s colleagues, first at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and for the past 16 years at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, noticed a similar male bias in adults with the cancer. About a decade ago, curious if his and his colleagues’ experiences were backed by data, Rubin turned to national registries for cancer incidence and outcome. The data revealed that, “indeed, for decades it’s been documented that . . . overall, males get more cancer than females,” he says.
Prognosis and survival were also typically worse in men than in women across a range of cancers, Rubin learned. Beyond those cancers for which anatomy dictates they be predominantly or exclusively female—breast, ...
