The incidence of non-melanoma skin cancers in young adults has increased significantly in the last three decades, according to findings of a Mayo Clinic study published in the Aug. 10 issue of JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association.
"Because non-melanoma skin cancers generally occur in persons after 50, very little attention has been paid to their incidence in younger adults and children," says Leslie Christenson, M.D., Mayo Clinic dermatologist and lead investigator of the study. "We have discovered that these cancers are becoming increasingly prevalent in younger people, and if steps are not taken at a young age to prevent these cancers, we may see an exponential increase in the overall occurrence of non-melanoma skin cancers."
Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer diagnosed today, with approximately 1 million new cases each year in the United States. Of the two major categories of skin cancer, melanoma and non-melanoma, the latter is far more prevalent. There are two common types of non-melanoma skin cancer, basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), the types evaluated in this study.
Mayo Clinic investigators found that the incidence of BCC tumors increased over time (i.e., more occurrences in the early 2000s than in the late 1970s), as well as with the age of the patient, doubling during the study period. While the general increase in tumors in relation to age was anticipated, the overall incidence increase over time was unusual, and can be attributed mainly to the exponential increase in BCC tumors in women, especially those in their late 30s. Men often had larger BCC tumors than women – probably because women are more likely to seek early medical attention. SCC diagnoses also significantly increased over time for both men and women (incidence quadrupled), with an especially large peak in incidence of these tumors in men in their late 30s.