Gender Differences and the Causes of Skin Cancer
Inherent genetic differences are the reason why men are 3 times more likely than women to develop skin cancer; the reason isn’t sunlight, as many might be tempted to assume, researchers at University Medical Center in Ohio believe.
Many studies have shown that risk of squamous cell carcinoma increases with exposure to sunlight. For many years it was thought that the lifestyle has a say in the incidence of carcinoma, because men spend more time than women under the influence of sunlight, without adequate protection.
This could also be true, but researchers have shown that there are other factors involved – differences related to the gender of the person. Thus is determined the amount of antioxidants in the skin.
Dr Tatiana Oberyszyn , professor of pathology and virology, immunology and molecular genetics at Ohio Medical Center and co-workers, studied the effect of radiation on mice UVH – male and female – at an identical and acute exposure.
They compared various inflammatory reactions in groups of men and women, noting the degree of inflammation, antioxidant levels, the degree of degradation of DNA material and the level of myeloperoxidase epithelial cells in tissues. Myeloperoxidase is an enzyme that reflects the degree of infiltration of neutrophils. This is the first step in the inflammatory response. Antioxidants help repair damaged DNA material and also help the cleaning of toxic products resulting from tissue damage.
She discovered significant differences between the two groups. Males had an inflammatory response with a lower magnitude than females; this was the result of measurements related to skin thickness and peroxidase levels. DNA material also had more extensive lesions and a lower level of antioxidants.
They also noted that there is a difference between the antioxidant capacity of action in male and female – noticeable difference regardless of presence / absence of radiation.
Oberyszyn believes that higher level of antioxidants in females was the one that limited the tumor extension. Oberyszyn says that the studies must be completed in order to validate the findings, but the data obtained are consistent with other studies, suggesting a potential biological basis for differences – depending on gender – in the development of cancer and other diseases.