Cutaneous Melanoma: Sheep in Wolves Clothing?
Anticancer Research 42: 5021-5025 (2022) doi:10.21873/anticanres.16010
FRANK R. DE GRUIJL1 and BRUCE K. ARMSTRONG2
1 dermatology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, the Netherlands;
2 School of Global and Population Health, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia
NOTE: Sunbeds are used infrequently
and have much higher raitio of UV/UVB than sunlight
Cutaneous melanoma incidence in European-origin populations has risen steeply, however, mortality has not, as 73 years of Danish cancer data strikingly show. It has been suggested that such divergent trends in the US are due to overdiagnosis from increasing diagnostic scrutiny and lowering diagnostic threshold. Alternatively, the increase in melanoma incidence may be largely due to increased sun exposure, which would imply that most of these new, sun-caused, melanomas are non-lethal. Consistent with this hypothesis, Icelandic data show an increase in melanoma incidence, predominantly in young women (<50 years), which paralleled increasing sunbed use that remitted after a campaign against sunbeds. Meanwhile, melanoma mortality in young people remained virtually zero. The increase in mortality was mainly in the elderly (>50 years) and dictated by year of birth. This transient excess of melanoma in young people is most likely attributable to skin burns from sunbeds which, like sunburns, carry a high risk of melanoma. High exposure ofnaevi to UV radiation can induce transient clinical and pathological features of melanoma, which might explain some of the apparent rise in incidence. Ways of distinguishing non-lethal from potentially lethal thin melanomas are sorely needed.
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See also Overview Suntan, melanoma and vitamin D
People who get UVA daily rarely get melanoma
Vitamin D levels from daily UVB build up and prevent DNA damage from UVA
Outdoor workers, gardeners, native Americans, seafarers, etc,
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