Sex- and gender-specific disparities in colorectal cancer risk.

By Sung-Eun Kim, H. Paik, H. Yoon, J. E. Lee, Nayoung Kim, Mi-Kyung Sung. 2015

450 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common causes of cancer morbidity both in men and in women. However, females over 65 years old show higher mortality and lower 5-year survival rate of colorectal cancer compared to their age-matched male counterparts. The objective of this review is to suggest gender-based innovations to improve colorectal cancer outcomes in females. Women have a higher risk of developing right-sided (proximal) colon cancer than men, which is associated with more aggressive form of neoplasia compared to left-sided (distal) colon cancer. Despite differences in tumor location between women and men, most of scientific researchers do not consider sex specificity for study design and interpretation. Also, colorectal cancer screening guidelines do not distinguish females from male, which may explain the higher frequency of more advanced neoplasia when tumors are first detected and false negative results in colonoscopy in females. Moreover, socio-cultural barriers within females are present to delay screening and diagnosis. Few studies, among studies that included both men and women, have reported sex-specific estimates of dietary risk factors which are crucial to establish cancer prevention guidelines despite sex- and gender-associated differences in nutrient metabolism and dietary practices. Furthermore, anti-cancer drug use for colorectal cancer treatment can cause toxicity to the reproductive system, and gender-specific recurrence and survival rates are reported. Therefore, by understanding sex- and gender-related biological and socio-cultural differences in colorectal cancer risk, gender-specific strategies for screening, treatment and prevention protocols can be established to reduce the mortality and improve the quality of life.

Subfields: Oncology, Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

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1. Prashanth Rawla
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Citations in the corpus

• Flexibly Fair Representation Learning by Disentanglement (2019, background): “Machine learning systems are capable of exhibiting discriminatory behaviors against certain demographic groups in high-stakes domains such as law, finance, and medicine (Kirchner et al., 2016; Aleo & Svirsky, 2008; Kim et al., 2015).”
• Epidemiology of colorectal cancer: incidence, mortality, survival, and risk factors (2019, background): “When compared to men, women are more prone to right-sided colon cancer, which is associated with a more aggressive form of neoplasia when compared to left-sided colon cancer [22].”
• Prognostic and predictive value of primary tumour side in patients with RAS wild-type metastatic colorectal cancer treated with chemotherapy and EGFR directed antibodies in six randomized trials † (2017, background): “Thus, patients with right-sided tumours are generally associated with a worse prognosis than those with left-sided tumours [16, 19–22] and endoscopically the appearance of right- and leftsided tumours is different [14].”
• A Review of Colorectal Cancer in Terms of Epidemiology, Risk Factors, Development, Symptoms and Diagnosis (2021, background): “On the other hand, women are more prone to develop right-sided colon cancer, which is often diagnosed at a more advanced stage and seemed more aggressive than left-sided tumors [64,65].”