The incidence and survival of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer in patients with vitiligo: A nationwide population-based matched cohort study in Korea

Source: MDLinx, July 2019

Researchers conducted this retrospective, matched cohort study to quantify the incidence of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) in Korean vitiligo patients and compare it with their matched non-vitiligo controls. The study sample consisted of 131,245 incident vitiligo cases and 2,624,900 age and sex-matched (1:20) controls at index date, who were selected between January 2005 and December 2017 from the Korean National Health Insurance database. Data reported that UV treatment-adjusted hazard ratio (HR) of melanoma in vitiligo patients was 3·32 and that of NMSC was 1·29. It was noted that the HRs for melanoma and NMSC in the vitiligo population without a history of UV treatment were 3·37 and 1·35, respectively. Unlike in Caucasians, in the Korean vitiligo population, the risk of skin cancer has risen. However, it is noteworthy that in Korean vitiligo patients, the incidence of skin cancer was lower than that of their Caucasian counterparts. Skin cancer surveillance in the vitiligo population may be adjusted to race due to possible ethnic differences in the susceptibility to skin cancer.