Married people are more likely than the unmarried to get timely diagnosis and treatment for malignant skin cancer.

A study published in JAMA Dermatology used a large cancer registry to catalog tumor stage and marital status in 52,063 patients diagnosed with melanoma. The population, average age 64, was 58.8 percent male. Almost 70 percent were married.

After controlling for age, sex, education level and other factors, the researchers found that 46 percent of married people went to a doctor at the earliest stage of the disease, compared with 43 percent of the never married, 39 percent of the divorced, and 32 percent of the widowed.

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