Skin Cancer Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Skin Cancer, including details on identification, causes, prevention, treatment.

Site-specific occurrence of nonmelanoma skin cancers in patients with cutaneous melanoma.

Neale RE, Forman D, Murphy MF, Whiteman DC

Childhood Cancer Research Group, 57 Woodstock Rd, Oxford OX2 6HJ, UK. rachel.neale@ccrg.ox.ac.uk

In a registry-based case-control study, we compared the site-specific occurrence of nonmelanoma (keratinocytic) skin cancers among patients with cutaneous melanoma cases (cases, n = 3774) and solid tumours (controls, n = 349,923), respectively. Overall, patients with melanoma were almost five-fold more likely to develop keratinocytic cancers compared with solid tumour controls (adjusted OR 4.7, 95% CI 4.1-5.3), but the risks varied depending upon the site of melanoma. Whereas patients with melanoma of the head and neck had similarly increased risks of keratinocytic cancers across all body sites, patients with melanoma of the trunk were significantly more likely to develop keratinocyte cancer diagnosed on the trunk (adjusted OR 12.5, 95% CI 7.2-20.2) than on the head and neck (adjusted OR 3.0, 95% CI 2.2-4.3). Similar colocalisation of skin tumours was observed for patients with melanomas of the lower limb. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that skin cancers at different anatomical sites may arise through different causal pathways.

Published 1 September 2005 in Br J Cancer, 93(5): 597-601.
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