WEDNESDAY, Nov. 13, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Melanoma incidence seems to be decreasing in adolescents and young adults, according to a study published online Nov. 13 in JAMA Dermatology.
Kelly G. Paulson, M.D., Ph.D., from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and colleagues conducted an observational study to examine the incidence of melanoma in the United States. Deidentified data were included for 988,103 cases of invasive melanoma from 2001 to 2015.
A total of 83,362 cases of invasive melanoma were reported in the United States in 2015, including 67, 251, and 1,973 in children younger than 10, adolescents aged 10 to 19 years, and young adults aged 20 to 29 years, respectively. The researchers found that the overall incidence rate increased between 2006 and 2015 from 200.1 to 229.1 cases per million person-years. Melanoma rates increased by an annual percentage change (APC) of 1.8 percent in both men and women. For adolescents and young adults, there were clinically and statistically significant decreases in melanoma incidence, with decreases by an APC of −4.4 and −5.4 percent for male and female adolescents, respectively, and decreases by an APC of −3.7 and −3.6 percent for male and female young adults, respectively.
“These data provide an impetus to further improve multimodal efforts aimed at reducing the burden of melanoma and encourage ongoing ultraviolet exposure protection efforts throughout the lifetime of individuals,” the authors write.
Several authors disclosed financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
