ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
This article is part of the Research TopicSex and Gender Differences in CancerView all 3 articles
Age-Dependent Diminution of Female Prognostic Advantage in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors: A Retrospective Cohort Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- The First Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract: Background: Sex and age are significant factors influencing the prognosis of various types of cancer. However, the impact of sex and age on the prognosis of gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) remains unclear. Investigating the interaction between sex and age may facilitate a more precise assessment of the prognosis of GISTs. Methods: A retrospective analysis was conducted on a cohort of 5318 patients with GISTs, utilizing the Cox regression model to analyze the disparities in disease-specific survival (DSS) across sex. Subsequently, the cohort after propensity score matching was employed to investigate the prognostic differences attributable to age variations, and restricted cubic spline analysis was utilized to assess the prognostic disparities associated with different sexes and ages in GIST. Results: This investigation demonstrated substantial sex-based disparities in the clinical characteristics of GIST. With respect to prognosis, males exhibited a significantly elevated hazard ratio (HR) for DSS in comparison to females (HR=1.40, p<0.001), which persisted following multivariate (HR=1.38, p=0.006) and propensity score matching analyses (HR=1.36, p=0.014). Moreover, a significant interaction between age and sex was observed in predicting DSS, notably indicating that younger female subjects (≤50 years) demonstrated a more favorable prognosis relative to their male counterparts. Conclusions: Female patients with GIST exhibit a more favorable prognosis than males, with this advantage decreasing with advancing age.
Keywords: Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumor, SEER, Survival, Sex-difference, prognosis
Received: 23 Apr 2025; Accepted: 28 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Liu, Bing and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hao Xu, hxu@cmu.edu.cn
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.