Mayo Clinic researchers revealed that skin cancer diagnosis among people aged between 40 and 60 years increased by eight times between 1970 and 2009.
Though many studies have been conducted on the rising incidence of melanoma, which affects 75,000 Americans annually and results in nearly 9,000 deaths, this is one of the few studies that looked into the age bracket of people at the highest risk.
Women were found to be more at risk in this age group. Between 1970 and 2009, skin cancer incidents increased by 24 times among women compared to 4.5 times among men of the same age group. Risk was highest amongst women between the ages of 40 and 50, which led researchers to speculate about a premenopausal hormonal connection to the disease.
On the bright side, researchers found that the chances of surviving skin cancer increased by 7 percent in the same time period.
"The improved survival rates may be due to increased public awareness, more frequent screenings, and detection of skin cancer at earlier stages," said dermatologist Jerry Brewer, M.D., principal investigator of the study. "People have more access to dermatologists than before, and we have new tools, like dermoscopy [which includes the widely used ABCDE criteria], to view details of a mole and detect earlier melanomas."
Melanoma is responsible for the death of an estimated 8,790 people in the U.S. annually. Around 120,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed in the country every year, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.
Tanning beds are said to be another cause of skin cancer. A report last year revealed that 1 in 7 skin cancer patients want to continue using these tanning devices despite being diagnosed with the illness. The Skin Cancer Foundation reported that this may be a new form of substance abuse now known as tanning addiction.
"There's been a cultural trend for many decades in which people connect being tan with being fit and even successful," said Brewer. This trend could be one of the reasons, Dr. Brewer says, that melanoma has become so prevalent in the groups he has studied.
The good news is that skin cancer can be prevented and there are many ways of doing so. They include avoiding the use of tanning beds, using sunscreen, being familiar with your skin by performing frequent self-skin examinations and checking in with your dermatologist annually.
