A new study found that young people who had non-melanoma skin cancer are more likely to develop the melanoma type and other cancers when they grow older.
According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, skin cancer is the most common form of cancers in the United States with over two million diagnosed per year. To put it simply, one of five Americans develop it through their lifetime.
There are two major types of skin cancers: the non-melanoma and the melanoma. The former can be treated by medical creams or simple surgery but the latter, which is a more serious condition, may lead to tumor when left untreated. Though only five percent of the skin cancer cases are melanoma, many die of it.
Meanwhile, about 90 percent of the non-melanoma cases are linked to over-exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun which means many are in danger of other forms of cancers based on the results of this new study.
Researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia, led by Professor Rodney Sinclair, studied the medical records of more than nine million people from various age groups. The data collected was from the All England Record-linked Hospital between 1999 and 2011. Five percent of the participants have history of non-melanoma skin cancer which the researchers followed for six years.
Their findings revealed that the non-melanoma skin cancer cases decrease as the age of the participants increase.
"The risk for developing any cancer subsequent to non-malignant skin cancer decreases significantly with increasing age: 23 times higher risk for those age 25 and younger; 3.52 for those ages 25 to 44; 1.74 for those ages 45 to 59; and 1.32 for those age 60 and older," Sinclair said in a statement.
While the first part of the study seemed good news, the follow-up findings were surprisingly alarming. They found that those who had the disease before they turned 25 years old had 53 times higher risk of having bone cancer, 26 times higher risk of getting blood cancer, 20 times higher risk of developing brain cancer and 14 times higher risk on other forms of cancers, UPI.com reports.
This study was published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention.
