Marriage may be good for catching melanoma early

Source: Reuters, June 2018

Married people may be more likely to spot a deadly skin cancer sooner than their counterparts who aren’t part of a couple, a U.S. study of melanoma patients suggests.
For the study, researchers examined data on 52,063 adults diagnosed with early-stage melanoma from 2010 to 2014. The study included 36,307 married patients, 7,570 never-married people, 3,650 individuals who were divorced and 4,536 who were widowed.
Compared to married patients, widows were 70 percent more likely to have early-stage melanoma diagnosed when it was thicker and harder to treat, while divorced people were 38 percent more likely to get diagnosed later and never-married individuals had 32 percent higher odds, the study team reports in JAMA Dermatology.