Cohort profile: The QSkin Sun and Health Study

Abstract

The QSkin Sun and Health Study comprises a cohort of 43 794 men and women aged 40-69 years randomly sampled from the population of Queensland, Australia in 2011. The cohort was established to study the development of skin cancer and melanoma in the population with the highest reported incidence of these diseases in the world. At baseline, besides demographic items and general medical history, information about standard pigmentary characteristics (including hair and eye colour, freckling tendency, tanning ability and propensity to sunburn), past and recent history of sun exposure and sunburns, sun protection behaviours, use of tanning beds and history of skin cancer was collected by self-completed questionnaire. Participants have given their consent for data linkage to the universal national health insurance scheme and for linkage to cancer registries and pathology databases, thus ensuring complete ascertainment of all future skin cancer and melanoma occurrences and medical treatments and other cancer events. Linkage to these registers will occur at predetermined intervals. Approval to access QSkin data can be obtained on application to the study investigators and submission of a formal research plan that has previous approval from the human research ethics committee of the applicant's institution.

Sun Protection and Skin Examination Practices in a Setting of High Ambient Solar Radiation

“…In addition, the large sample size, comprehensive data collection and use of validated instruments, 9,32 and universal capture of prior melanoma diagnoses through the population-based cancer registry were further strengths. Limitations of the analysis include the cross-sectional nature of the study design, which prevented us from assessing the Moreover, they correlated well with physician counts of actinic keratoses, 32 suggesting that these self-reported items are highly valid markers of chronically sun damaged skin.…”

“…A description of the study design and methods has been published previously. 9 At baseline, in addition to demographic items and general medical history, information about standard pigmentary characteristics, sun protection, whole-body skin examination practices, and history of skin cancer was collected by questionnaire.…”

Site-Specific Determinants of Cutaneous Melanoma: A Case–Case Comparison of Patients with Tumors Arising on the Head or Trunk

“…Finally, it is possible that reporting errors, particularly for past exposures such as treatments of solar keratoses or skin cancer, may have introduced misclassification into our study. The reliability of many of the items used in this study has been tested within a prospective cohort study of 43,794 Queensland residents currently being undertaken by the investigators (11). In that larger study, we performed reliability analyses on 114 participants surveyed on 2 occasions (average interval 188 days), and found agreement for items asking about numbers of previous skin cancers treated by surgery and numbers of solar keratoses treated by cryotherapy (the commonest modalities for these lesions in Queensland) were 0.79 (95% CI, 0.71-0.88) and 0.83 (95% CI, 0.76-0.90), respectively (12).…”

Sun Protection Behavior in Organ Transplant Recipients in Queensland, Australia

“…The aim of this study was to document the prevalence of a regular use of sun protection measures in kidney and liver transplant recipients living in the Australian state of Queensland where there is already a high incidence of skin cancer in the background healthy population [9]. We studied OTRs who we deemed to be at the highest risk of skin cancer since this population bears most of the skin cancer burden in the community.…”