(CNN) — Men are dying at a higher rate than women from melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, a new global analysis said.

Over the last three decades, male deaths from melanoma were higher than female deaths in 33 countries, according to the analysis presented Sunday at the 2018 NCRI Cancer Conference in Glasgow. Rates among women have either stabilized or decreased.

The study focused on 33 developed countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia, as they had the most reliable data.

The researchers “wanted to conduct an up-to-date analysis of recent melanoma mortality rates across the world to try to understand these patterns, and whether new diagnosis, treatment, and prevention strategies are having any effect,” said Dr. Dorothy Yang, a junior doctor at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, who led the research.

“Over the past 30 years mortality trends (for melanoma) have increased in most countries,” Yang told CNN. “There is evidence that suggests men are less likely to protect themselves from the sun or engage with melanoma awareness and prevention campaigns.”

She added that female and male biological differences are currently being studied to find out if these also contribute to the gender disparity in deaths from melanoma and stressed this is an observational study and that more research is needed into why there are gender differences in the mortality rates.

Melanoma has the highest mortality rate of skin cancers, according to the paper, and accounted for 1.7% of all cancer diagnoses worldwide this year. Yang’s team analyzed World Health Organization data on mortality rates from melanoma between 1985 and 2015 and identified a rise in male deaths from melanoma in 32 out of the 33 countries included in the analysis. The researchers took aging or younger populations in each country into account for their analysis.

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