Melanoma Epidemiology
Section snippets
US population melanoma rates
Melanoma incidence has continuously increased in the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program during the last 30 years (Table 1).1 In 2005, the age-adjusted incidence was 24.6 per 100,000 for men and 15.6 per 100,000 for women. There is a well-described lag in reporting of melanomas,2 so the estimates in Table 1 reflect delay-adjusted incidence. In the 1970s the rate of increase was higher, but the estimated annual percent change (EAPC) is currently 2.9%/y overall in the
Analytic studies of melanoma etiology
Most of the individual analytic studies have not been large enough to have sufficient power to evaluate subgroups of melanoma, however defined. There is also great heterogeneity in study designs, definition of risk factors, collection of data, and extent of phenotyping (eg, self-reports to physician examinations). It is therefore difficult to pool data, conduct meta-analyses, or directly compare results across studies. Meta-analyses use aggregate data; pooled analyses need to “harmonize” the
Family and genetic susceptibility studies
Family history of melanoma confers approximately two-fold increased risk of melanoma.29, 43, 44 Family history of one relative is moderately frequent in the United States; one large study found that 8% of cases had such a history.44 Much more infrequent are families with three or more living members with melanoma; these are the families in which identification of high-risk susceptibility genes is possible. In the same study, only 0.4% of cases reported two or more relatives previously diagnosed
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This work was supported by the Intramural Research Program, NCI, NIH.