Improved Survival in Women versus Men with Merkel Cell Carcinoma

Studies have observed that women have better outcomes than men in melanoma, but less is known about the role of sex differences in outcomes for other aggressive cutaneous malignancies. We hypothesized that similar sex differences may be observed in Merkel cell carcinoma.

In this study, including over 4,100 patients with Merkel cell carcinoma undergoing definitive surgical resection in the National Cancer Data Base between 2004 and 2014, we report that women had a consistent survival advantage in comparison to men after adjusting for other covariates in multivariate Cox regression and propensity score matched cohorts. Improved outcomes were observed in women across virtually all subgroups of patients. In this same study, we validated the initial results by using the SEER database. Importantly, we observed the improved survival in women was completely attributable to increased cancer-specific mortality, whereas there was no difference in other-cause mortality.