Rethinking Cancer Survivorship and the Autism Gender Gap

In this week’s episode, we challenge long-held medical narratives, starting with how the healthcare system manages life after a cancer diagnosis. While medical advancements mean more people are surviving cancer than ever before, many patients report a "cliff-edge" experience where coordinated care effectively vanishes once primary treatment ends. We are joined by Dr. Rosalind Adam, an Academic GP at the University of Aberdeen, who argues that it is time to stop viewing cancer as a discrete, one-off episode and instead integrate it into routine chronic disease management. Next, we dive into a landmark study from Sweden that is overturning the conventional notion of autism as a predominantly male condition. Historically, autism has been cited as having a 4:1 male-to-female ratio, but new data suggests this gap may be a byproduct of timing rather than biology. We speak with Dr. Caroline Fyfe, a medical epidemiologist at the University of Edinburgh, and Dr. Natasha Marrus, a child psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis. They discuss their analysis of 2.7 million individuals, which revealed a significant female catch-up during adolescence, showing that by age 20, the diagnosis ratio approaches 1:1. The team explores why girls are so often missed in childhood and what this shift means for the future of sex-sensitive diagnostic practices. Reading List For more details on the research discussed in this episode, you can access the full papers on bmj.com: Cancer is a chronic disease: why don’t we treat it as one? Adam R, Hogg DR, Ritchie LD, Nekhlyudov L. BMJ 2026;392:e086624. Time trends in the male to female ratio for autism incidence: population based, prospectively collected, birth cohort study. Fyfe C, et al. BMJ 2026;392:e084164. Please

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Rethinking Cancer Survivorship and the Autism Gender Gap is an episode from The BMJ Podcast by The BMJ.

This episode is 28:17 long.

This episode was published on Feb 20, 2026.

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