Gender differences in symptoms experienced by advanced cancer patients: a literature review

Wong, Erin; Bedard, Gillian; Pulenzas, Natalie; Lechner, Breanne; Lam, Henry; Thavarajah, Nemica; Holden, Lori; Chow, Edward; Lauzon, Natalie

doi:10.7175/rhc.v4i2.483

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(99 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Consistent with previous studies [6,[38][39][40], we found that women with cancer were more likely than men to be prescribed antidepressants or other medications. The type of medication prescribed to women may be selected to avoid pharmacokinetic interactions with anticancer drugs such as tamoxifen for breast cancer [26], or to help counteract chemotherapy side effects such as nausea that are more common in women [41]. We also found that the prescription of antidepressants decreased as patients aged, again consistent with previous findings [6,38].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Japanese Patients with Cancer: A Matched Cohort Study Using Employer-Based Health Insurance Claims Data

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background and Objective Patients with cancer are at high risk of major depressive disorder (MDD), but little is known about their MDD treatment. We investigated the use of antidepressants and other drugs for MDD after cancer diagnosis, and patient characteristics associated with their use. Methods Adults with a new cancer diagnosis were matched to cancer-free patients using a Japanese employee health insurance database (JMDC); this exploratory analysis included only cohort patients diagnosed with MDD between 6 months before and 12 months after the cancer diagnosis index month. Initial prescription frequencies of antidepressants and other MDD medications were compared between cancer and cancer-free groups and analyzed according to age, sex, and hospital characteristics. Results Compared with the cancer-free group (n = 4097), significantly fewer patients in the cancer group (n = 1199) were prescribed antidepressants {622 (51.9%) [95% CI 49.0-54.7] vs 2385 (58.2%) [95% CI 56.7-59.7]}, particularly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. In contrast, prescription of other medications, especially antipsychotics and anxiolytics (tandospirone, hydroxyzine), was more frequent in the cancer group than in the cancer-free group. In the cancer group, women were prescribed antidepressants (mostly selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and other medications (mostly benzodiazepines) more than men. Antidepressant prescription decreased with age; patients aged < 40 years had the highest selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and the lowest conventional antidepressant prescription rate compared with patients aged 40-64 years and ≥ 65 years. Lower selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor and benzodiazepine prescription rates were seen in large (≥ 100 beds) hospitals and in hospitals where patients received their cancer diagnosis. Conclusions These results suggest Japanese patients with cancer may be undertreated for MDD compared with cancer-free patients. However, when prescribed, medications may be chosen according to patient needs, including avoiding adverse effects and drug-drug interactions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 89%

Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Japanese Patients with Cancer: A Matched Cohort Study Using Employer-Based Health Insurance Claims Data

et al. 2020

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…With some studies indicating men with cancer, experience some symptoms more than women, and others reporting women experience more symptoms. [55][56][57][58] In our study, the sample of BC patients included only women, whereas the CRC sample included both men and women. It is possible that this finding may have been influenced by the mix of genders in our CRC sample and may have been similar to the BC findings if we had included only women with CRC in the analysis.…”

Section: Breast Cancermentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing the symptoms in colorectal and breast cancer patients with or without type 2 diabetes using EHR data

Luo

Storey

Gandhi

et al. 2021

Health Informatics J

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This research extracted patient-reported symptoms from free-text EHR notes of colorectal and breast cancer patients and studied the correlation of the symptoms with comorbid type 2 diabetes, race, and smoking status. An NLP framework was developed first to use UMLS MetaMap to extract all symptom terms from the 366,398 EHR clinical notes of 1694 colorectal cancer (CRC) patients and 3458 breast cancer (BC) patients. Semantic analysis and clustering algorithms were then developed to categorize all the relevant symptoms into eight symptom clusters defined by seed terms. After all the relevant symptoms were extracted from the EHR clinical notes, the frequency of the symptoms reported from colorectal cancer (CRC) and breast cancer (BC) patients over three time-periods post-chemotherapy was calculated. Logistic regression (LR) was performed with each symptom cluster as the response variable while controlling for diabetes, race, and smoking status. The results show that the CRC and BC patients with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) were more likely to report symptoms than CRC and BC without T2D over three time-periods in the cancer trajectory. We also found that current smokers were more likely to report anxiety (CRC, BC), neuropathic symptoms (CRC, BC), anxiety (BC), and depression (BC) than non-smokers.

show abstract

Prevalence, Severity, and Co-Occurrence of SPPADE Symptoms in 31,866 Patients With Cancer

Kroenke¹,

Lam²,

Ruddy³

et al. 2023

Journal of Pain and Symptom Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Gender differences in symptoms experienced by advanced cancer patients: a literature review

Cited by 6 publications

References 36 publications

Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Japanese Patients with Cancer: A Matched Cohort Study Using Employer-Based Health Insurance Claims Data

Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder in Japanese Patients with Cancer: A Matched Cohort Study Using Employer-Based Health Insurance Claims Data

Analyzing the symptoms in colorectal and breast cancer patients with or without type 2 diabetes using EHR data

Prevalence, Severity, and Co-Occurrence of SPPADE Symptoms in 31,866 Patients With Cancer

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About