ReviewBiology of sex differences2020
Sex differences in cancer mechanisms.
Review in Biology of sex differences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 201 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
201 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 365 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex-based responses to immunotherapy in esophageal cancer: insights from a meta-analysis.BMC gastroenterology · 2026Pooled it
- Different outcomes by sex in metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor patients receiving imatinib: a trial-level analysis.International journal of clinical oncology · 2025Pooled it
- Endogenous Sex Steroid Hormones, Sex Hormone-Binding Globulin, and Risk of All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies.The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism · 2025Pooled it
- Differences between men and women in their risk of work injury and disability: A systematic review.American journal of industrial medicine · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies in newborns and children show widespread sex differences in blood DNA methylation.Mutation research. Reviews in mutation researchPooled it
- Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Gastric Cancer may Worsen Prognosis in Elderly Women: Retrospective Analysis of Individual Patient Data from the CLASSIC Study.Journal of gastrointestinal cancer · 2025Trial
- Pan-cancer analysis of Notch pathway-linked gene expression identifies tumour-specific and sex-stratified prognostic associations.Clinical and translational radiation oncology · 2026Article
- Comparative Analysis of the Immune Profiles of Women and Men With Hepatocellular Carcinoma.Cancer medicine · 2026Article
- Deep learning aging marker from retinal images unveils sex-specific clinical and genetic signatures.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Pancreatoblastoma: A Descriptive and Comparative Analysis with Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Using SEER Data.Cancers · 2026Article
- Global, regional, and national analysis of CNS cancers burden from 1990 to 2021 and forecast of disease trend over the next 25 years.Medicine · 2026Article
- Sexually Dimorphic RNA Helicase DDX3Y, But Not DDX3X, Plays a Potential Tumor-Suppressive Role in Colorectal Carcinogenesis in Males.Biochemical genetics · 2026Article
- Sex differences in cancer incidence and survival: a Danish nationwide population-based study assessing 35 cancer sites.British journal of cancer · 2026Article
- GABA signaling activation drives glioblastoma progression in female mice through myeloid-derived suppressor cells.Nature cancer · 2026Article
- Oestrogen receptor phosphorylation profiles and in silico PAM50 subtyping reflect sexual dimorphism in breast cancer.The journal of pathology. Clinical research · 2026Article
- Fairness-aware supervised hierarchical contrastive semantic learning for sexual dimorphism analysis.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Sex differences in cancer incidence among people with HIV infection in the United States.Journal of the National Cancer Institute · 2026Article
- Primary Tumor-Associated Loss of the Y Chromosome and Clinical Outcome in Metastatic Colorectal Cancer.Genes, chromosomes & cancer · 2026Article
- Review
- Sex-Specific Responses to Intermittent Fasting: A Narrative Review Across Physiological, Clinical, and Psychosocial Contexts.Nutrients · 2026Review
141 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
We now know that cancer is many different diseases, with great variation even within a single histological subtype. With the current emphasis on developing personalized approaches to cancer treatment, it is astonishing that we have not yet systematically incorporated the biology of sex differences into our paradigms for laboratory and clinical cancer research. While some sex differences in cancer arise through the actions of circulating sex hormones, other sex differences are independent of estrogen, testosterone, or progesterone levels. Instead, these differences are the result of sexual differentiation, a process that involves genetic and epigenetic mechanisms, in addition to acute sex hormone actions. Sexual differentiation begins with fertilization and continues beyond menopause. It affects virtually every body system, resulting in marked sex differences in such areas as growth, lifespan, metabolism, and immunity, all of which can impact on cancer progression, treatment response, and survival. These organismal level differences have correlates at the cellular level, and thus, males and females can fundamentally differ in their protections and vulnerabilities to cancer, from cellular transformation through all stages of progression, spread, and response to treatment. Our goal in this review is to cover some of the robust sex differences that exist in core cancer pathways and to make the case for inclusion of sex as a biological variable in all laboratory and clinical cancer research. We finish with a discussion of lab- and clinic-based experimental design that should be used when testing whether sex matters and the appropriate statistical models to apply in data analysis for rigorous evaluations of potential sex effects. It is our goal to facilitate the evaluation of sex differences in cancer in order to improve outcomes for all patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.