Singer S, Tkachenko E, Hartman RI, Mostaghimi A. Gender Identity and Lifetime Prevalence of Skin Cancer in the United States. JAMA Dermatol. Published online February 12, 2020.

Gender identity refers to one’s personal sense of gender and includes identifying as cisgender (ie, a gender identity that aligns with the sex assigned at birth), transgender (ie, a gender identity that does not align with the sex assigned at birth), and gender nonconforming (GNC) (ie, a gender identity that does not follow others’ ideas about how a person should look or act based on the sex assigned at birth). There has been increasing national focus on examining cancer risks of transgender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) patients and, although prior research has examined skin cancer prevalence among sexual minority populations, this study is the first, to our knowledge, to evaluate skin cancer history by gender identity.

Discussion

Compared with cisgender men, GNC individuals but not transgender men or women had a higher self-reported lifetime prevalence of skin cancer. While the reasons for this finding are unclear and require further evaluation, our leading hypothesis would be increased engagement in skin cancer risk behaviors. Cisgender women had significantly lower odds of lifetime prevalence of skin cancer than cisgender men, which is consistent with existing data on gender differences in skin cancer in the United States.

Read the full paper via Jama doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2019.4197