Sex Biases in Cancer and Autoimmune Disease Incidence Are Strongly Positively Correlated with Mitochondrial Gene Expression across Human Tissues

David R Crawford, Sanju Sinha, Nishanth Ulhas Nair, Bríd M Ryan, Jill S Barnholtz-Sloan, Stephen M Mount, Ayelet Erez, Kenneth Aldape, Philip E Castle, Padma S Rajagopal, Chi-Ping Day, Alejandro A Schäffer, Eytan Ruppin

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Cancer occurs more frequently in men while autoimmune diseases (AIDs) occur more frequently in women. To explore whether these sex biases have a common basis, we collected 167 AID incidence studies from many countries for tissues that have both a cancer type and an AID that arise from that tissue. Analyzing a total of 182 country-specific, tissue-matched cancer-AID incidence rate sex bias data pairs, we find that, indeed, the sex biases observed in the incidence of AIDs and cancers that occur in the same tissue are positively correlated across human tissues. The common key factor whose levels across human tissues are most strongly associated with these incidence rate sex biases is the sex bias in the expression of the 37 genes encoded in the mitochondrial genome.
Original languageEnglish
Article number5885
JournalCancers
Volume14
Issue number23
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2022

Keywords

  • autoimmune disease incidence
  • autoimmunity
  • cancer incidence
  • immunity
  • inflammation
  • mitochondria
  • sex bias

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Oncology
  • Cancer Research

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