Women are more likely to beat cancer than men beat cancer

WOMEN ARE better at surviving cancer than men, according to one of the most comprehensive studies of trends in the disease.

Across most of the main cancers, women do better than men and, in some cases, significantly better. The five-year survival rate for women with malignant melanoma, the skin cancer, is 82 per cent compared with 68 per cent for men, among patients diagnosed between 1986 and 1990.

Women also have the advantage in bowel cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, most leukaemias and most head and neck cancers. Only bladder cancer kills women sooner than men. Although in most cases the difference in survival between the sexes is slight - about 1 or 2 per cent - it has a big effect because of the numbers contracting cancer.

In the UK, the disease is diagnosed in over 250,000 people each year and it causes one in four deaths. Cancer has overtaken heart disease, which is falling, as the leading cause of death in those under 65. Women with cancer tended to do better because they were more health conscious, took problems to the doctor sooner, and were better at complying with treatment, he said. The sooner a cancer is diagnosed the better the chances of survival.

"Women may be biologically different and they may have less aggressive disease. Oestrogen may affect more cancers than the obvious ones, such as breast cancer," said Professor Gordon McVie, director general of the Cancer Research Campaign.

The study, Cancer Survival Trends 1971-1995, covers 47 adult cancers and 11 children's cancers and is based on the records of three million adults and 18,000 children. It was commissioned by the Cancer Research Campaign and carried out by researchers from the Office of National Statistics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. It shows that for every cancer bar one, five-year survival rates improved over the two decades from 1971 to 1990, many by between 10 and 20 per cent. The sole exception was the rare cancer of the salivary glands.

The biggest increase was in melanoma where survival rates improved by 22 per cent for men and 17 per cent for women. Breast cancer survival improved 14 per cent. Two-thirds of women with breast cancer diagnosed in the late 1980s survived five years compared with only half of those diagnosed in the early 1970s. The study also revealed a cancer survival gap between rich and poor. For 21 adult cancers, including breast, bowel and melanoma, the better off were up to 16 per cent more likely to survive.