Steep rise in skin cancer since 1960s

Source: Medical Xpress, June 2020

The risk of developing more than one skin melanoma over a ten-year period has seen a ten-fold increase in Sweden since the 1960s, a new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Lund University published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute reports. The researchers suspect that the increase is due to a change in holiday customs with more active sunbathing and overseas trips to southern climes.

“There are many health benefits to being outside, but it would be good if studies like this could encourage people to protect their skin better and find other ways to enjoy their holidays than by sunbathing," says principal investigator Hildur Helgadottir, consultant at Karolinska University Hospital in Solna and researcher at the Department of Oncology-Pathology, Karolinska Institutet.

Skin cancer of the melanoma type is one of the fastest increasing tumor diseases in numerous countries, including in Sweden, where there were 4,543 new cases of invasive melanoma and 508 melanoma-related deaths reported in 2018. The main cause of this constant increase is thought to be an excessive exposure to UV radiation.

READ THE ORIGINAL FULL ARTICLE