Men have a higher incidence of most cancers than women. A study showed that the cause could be underlying biological sex differences rather than behavioural differences related to smoking, alcohol consumption, food, and other things.
The findings of the research were published by Wiley in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.
Understanding the reasons for sex differences in cancer risk could provide important information to improve prevention and treatment. Men had an increased risk of most cancers even after adjusting for a wide range of risk behaviors and carcinogenic exposures. Indeed, differences in risk behaviors and carcinogenic exposures between the sexes only accounted for a modest proportion of the male predominance of most cancers (ranging from 11 per cent for esophageal cancer to 50 per cent for lung cancer).
The findings suggest that biological differences between sexes such as physiological, immunological, genetic, and other differences play a major role in the cancer susceptibility of men versus women.