Many Melanoma Patients May Have Few Moles

Source: Live Science, February 2016

Checking out the moles on your skin is a common way to look for the deadly skin cancer melanoma, but a new study shows that many people with melanoma may have few moles.

In the study, researchers looked at about 560 people with melanoma and found that 66 percent of them had 20 or fewer moles.

The new results show that all people, including those who have few moles, “should be paying attention to their moles, should be looking at their skin really carefully and should be asking their doctors for regular skin checks," said study author Alan C. Geller, a senior lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

The researchers also found that 20.5 percent of people in the study had 20 to 50 moles, and 13.1 percent had more than 50 moles. The average age of people in the study was 57. [Top 10 Cancer-Fighting Foods]

Among patients younger than 60, those who had more than 50 moles tended to have melanoma tumors that were thinner (less than 2 millimeters thick, or about 0.08 of an inch), compared with those who had fewer than 50 moles. The thickness of the melanoma indicates how deeply the cancer has gone into the skin, and so this finding shows that the people with a lot of moles did not necessarily have the most severe cases of melanoma.