Inherited genes play a larger role in melanoma risk than previously believed

Source: MedicalXpress, May 2024

When it comes to skin cancer, most people think of warnings about sunburn and tanning beds. Thoughts of “cancer genes" or inherited risks are reserved for diseases like breast cancer or colon cancer. A new study challenges this status quo by showing that genetics play a larger role in melanoma risk than recognized.

Physicians rarely order genetic screens to assess risk factors for patients with a family history of melanoma, because according to the previous limited studies, only 2–2.5% of all cases are genetic. For the same reason, insurance companies rarely cover these tests outside of the most extreme situations. In the medical field, genetic testing is generally not offered for cancers that don’t meet a threshold of 5%.

A study from researchers and clinicians led by Cleveland Clinic’s Joshua Arbesman, MD, and Stanford Medicine’s Pauline Funchain, MD (formerly Cleveland Clinic), suggests that melanoma more than meets that threshold. Their results, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, report that up to 15% (1 in 7) of patients who received melanoma diagnoses from Cleveland Clinic physicians between 2017 and 2020 carried mutations in cancer susceptibility genes. The research team, which includes Cleveland Clinic Center for Immunotherapy and Precision Oncology’s Ying Ni, Ph.D., and Claudia Marcela Diaz, Ph.D., analyzed international patient databases and found similar results.
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