Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Acral lentiginous melanoma presents distinct clinical profile with high cancer susceptibility

  • Brief Report
  • Published:
Cancer Causes & Control Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background

Acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) is a distinct histological variant of cutaneous melanoma that presents a genomic profile different from the other variants. Our aim was to explore the distinctive clinical, pathological, and epidemiological characteristics of ALM.

Patients and methods

A series of 978 patients with primary cutaneous melanoma was selected from a single referral center. Among these, 79 were located on acral sites and 46 presented an ALM. This group was compared with a group composed of 932 patients with the remaining three most frequent cutaneous melanoma variants.

Results

The ALM differed significantly from other variants: in an older age at diagnosis (65.52 vs. 51.79 years), a lower number of common (88.2 vs. 55.8%) and atypical nevi (95.0 vs. 80.2%), a predisposing genetic trait to cancer (22.2 vs. 7.1% had a personal history of other non-cutaneous malignancies and 58.1 vs. 36.4% had at least one first degree relative with non-cutaneous neoplasia) and lower number of sunburns (88.2 vs. 47.4% remembered none). Also, the tumors were thicker (mean of 2.94 vs. 2.03 mm), more frequently ulcerated (74.2 vs. 23.9%) and with perineural invasion (8.0 vs. 1.5%), had lower degree of inflammatory infiltrate (36.8 vs. 7.5% was absent) and were less frequently associated with a previous melanocytic lesion (8.3 vs. 32.6%). Differences were kept even after age-adjusted analyses.

Conclusions

Our results, from a clinical and epidemiological point of view, support recent data on genetic characterization of melanomas. In comparison with the other frequent variants we have shown that ALM has some important differences which emphasize that it is a distinct entity more probably related to certain cancer susceptibility but unrelated to familial melanoma, tendency to developing nevus or sun exposure.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Kabbarah O, Chin L (2005) Revealing the genomic heterogeneity of melanoma. Cancer Cell 8:439–441

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Halpern AC, Marghoob AA, Sober AJ (2003) Clinical characteristics. In: Balch CM, Houghton AN, Sober AJ (eds) Cutaneous melanoma, 4th edn. Quality Medical Publishing, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, pp 135–162

    Google Scholar 

  3. Krementz ET, Feed RJ, Coleman WP 3rd et al (1982) Acral lentiginous melanoma. A clinicopathologic entity. Ann Surg 195:632–645

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  4. Stalkup JR, Orengo IF, Katta R (2002) Controversies in acral lentiginous melanoma. Dermatol Surg 28:1051–1059 (discussion 9)

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Kuchelmeister C, Schaumburg-Lever G, Garbe C (2000) Acral cutaneous melanoma in caucasians: clinical features, histopathology and prognosis in 112 patients. Br J Dermatol 143:275–280

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Green A, McCredie M, MacKie R et al (1999) A case-control study of melanomas of the soles and palms (Australia and Scotland). Cancer Causes Control 10:21–25

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  7. Phan A, Touzet S, Dalle S et al (2007) Acral lentiginous melanoma: histopathological prognostic features of 121 cases. Br J Dermatol 157:311–318

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  8. Briggs JC (1984) The role of trauma in the aetiology of malignant melanoma: a review article. Br J Plast Surg 37:514–516

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Curtin JA, Fridlyand J, Kageshita T et al (2005) Distinct sets of genetic alterations in melanoma. N Engl J Med 353:2135–2147

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  10. Saldanha G, Potter L, Daforno P et al (2006) Cutaneous melanoma subtypes show different BRAF and NRAS mutation frequencies. Clin Cancer Res 12:4499–4505

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Lang J, MacKie RM (2005) Prevalence of exon 15 BRAF mutations in primary melanoma of the superficial spreading, nodular, acral, and lentigo maligna subtypes. J Invest Dermatol 125:575–579

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  12. Sasaki Y, Niu C, Makino R et al (2004) BRAF point mutations in primary melanoma show different prevalences by subtype. J Invest Dermatol 123:177–183

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  13. Nagore E, Oliver V, Botella-Estrada R et al (2006) Clinicopathological analysis of 1571 cutaneous malignant melanomas in Valencia, Spain: factors related to tumour thickness. Acta Derm Venereol 86:50–56

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  14. Gandini S, Sera F, Cattaruzza MS et al (2005) Meta-analysis of risk factors for cutaneous melanoma: I. Common and atypical naevi. Eur J Cancer 41:28–44

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  15. Crowson AN, Magro CM, Barnhill RL et al (2003) Pathology. In: Balch CM, Houghton AN, Sober AJ (eds) Cutaneous melanoma, 4th edn. Quality Medical Publishing, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, pp 171–206

    Google Scholar 

  16. Clemente CG, Mihm MC Jr, Bufalino R et al (1996) Prognostic value of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes in the vertical growth phase of primary cutaneous melanoma. Cancer 77:1303–1310

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Phan A, Touzet S, Dalle S et al (2006) Acral lentiginous melanoma: a clinicoprognostic study of 126 cases. Br J Dermatol 155:561–569

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  18. Ridgeway CA, Hieken TJ, Ronan SG et al (1995) Acral lentiginous melanoma. Arch Surg 130:88–92

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  19. Sutherland CM, Mather FJ, Muchmore JH et al (1993) Acral lentiginous melanoma. Am J Surg 166:64–67

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  20. Balch CM, Buzaid AC, Soong SJ et al (2001) Final version of the American Joint Committee on cancer staging system for cutaneous melanoma. J Clin Oncol 19:3635–3648

    PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  21. Edlundh-Rose E, Egyhazi S, Omholt K et al (2006) NRAS and BRAF mutations in melanoma tumours in relation to clinical characteristics: a study based on mutation screening by pyrosequencing. Melanoma Res 16:471–478

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  22. Curtin JA, Busam K, Pinkel D et al (2006) Somatic activation of KIT in distinct subtypes of melanoma. J Clin Oncol 24:4340–4346

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Whiteman DC, Watt P, Purdie DM et al (2003) Melanocytic nevi, solar keratoses, and divergent pathways to cutaneous melanoma. J Natl Cancer Inst 95:806–812

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  24. Whiteman DC, Parsons PG, Green AC (1998) p53 expression and risk factors for cutaneous melanoma: a case-control study. Int J Cancer 77:843–848

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

  25. Grange F, Chompret A, Guilloud-Bataille M et al (1995) Comparison between familial and nonfamilial melanoma in France. Arch Dermatol 131:1154–1159

    Article  PubMed  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Geoffrey Hall, F.R.C.P (UK) for his invaluable help with the English style.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Dermatology, Instituto Valenciano de Oncología, Avda. Barón de Cárcer, 42-17, 46001, Valencia, Spain

    Eduardo Nagore, Carolina Pereda, Rafael Botella-Estrada, Celia Requena & Carlos Guillén

Authors
  1. Eduardo Nagore
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Carolina Pereda
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Rafael Botella-Estrada
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Celia Requena
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Carlos Guillén
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eduardo Nagore.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Nagore, E., Pereda, C., Botella-Estrada, R. et al. Acral lentiginous melanoma presents distinct clinical profile with high cancer susceptibility. Cancer Causes Control 20, 115–119 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-008-9221-y

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-008-9221-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation