Abstract
Men are more likely to develop cancer than women. In fact, male predominance is one of the most consistent cancer epidemiology findings. Additionally, men have a poorer prognosis and an increased risk of secondary malignancies compared to women. These differences have been investigated in order to better understand cancer and to better treat both men and women. In this review, we discuss factors that may cause this gender difference, focusing on urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) pathogenesis. We consider physiological factors that may cause higher male cancer rates, including differences in X chromosome gene expression. We discuss how androgens may promote bladder cancer development directly by stimulating bladder urothelium and indirectly by suppressing immunity. We are particularly interested in the role of natural killer (NK) cells in anti-cancer immunity.
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
11-4-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm10215163
Funding Information
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Kentucky. The UK Flow Cytometry and Immune Monitoring core facility is supported in part by the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Markey Cancer Center, and an NCI Center Core Support Grant (P30 CA177558) to the University of Kentucky Markey Cancer Center.
Related Content
Data will be made available upon request to the first author.
Repository Citation
Lutz, Charles T.; Livas, Lydia; Presnell, Steven R.; Sexton, Morgan; and Wang, Peng, "Gender Differences in Urothelial Bladder Cancer: Effects of Natural Killer Lymphocyte Immunity" (2021). Pathology and Laboratory Medicine Faculty Publications. 48.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/pathology_facpub/48
Included in
Allergy and Immunology Commons, Integrative Medicine Commons, Oncology Commons, Pathology Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Journal of Clinical Medicine, v. 10, issue 21, 5163.
© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).