Malignant melanoma in southern Arizona. Increasing incidence and sunlight as an etiologic factor

Abstract

This study demonstrated an increasing incidence of malignant melanoma during the past ten years and a very high incidence of this tumor in southern Arizona. During the ten-year period, 533 melanomas were removed from white patients. Of these, 52% were male and 48% were female. The number of melanomas increased yearly, from 20 in 1969 to 120 in 1978, a crude rate incidence of 6.49 to 28.57 (27.20 standardized) per 100,000, respectively. This reflects an average annual increase of 34% to 37% and a 340% increase for the period. The highest incidence of tumor was in the 50 to 59 year and 60 to 69 year age groups. The most common site of occurrence was the back, with twice as many tumors arising there in males. The legs were involved in 13% of patients, with an occurrence rate eight times higher in females. The extremely high incidence of melanomas in southern Arizona is probably due to meteorologic and geographic factors allowing large amounts of ultraviolet light to reach the earth's surface.

Malignant melanoma in Cape Town, South Africa

“…8 The only comparable incidence rates are in Hawaiian white people (22·7 per 100,000 in men and 18·8 per 100,000 in women) 7 and in Southern Arizona, U.S.A. (27·2 per 100,000). 19 Between 1979 and 1989, the Scottish Melanoma Group demonstrated an overall increase in incidence rate in Scotland of 82% in 11 years (3·4 increasing to 7·1 per 100,000 in men and 6·6 increasing to 10·4 per 100,000 in women). 6 The Cape Town overall standardized incidence rate of 24·4 per 100,000 is similar to that for Australia as a whole, but substantially less than that for Queensland and New South Wales.…”

Sunlight and Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma: Evidence for and Against Causation

“…In Norway, melanoma incidence in the southern part of the country is almost three times that seen in the north (Magnus, 1973;Magnus, 1977). In the US, 1980 incidence data showed a rate of 9/100 000 in Connecticut (Sober, 1987) compared with 26/100 000 in Tucson, Arizona (Schreiber et a/., 1981).…”

Light Exposure of the Lower Leg as a Pathogenetic Factor in the Occurrence of Malignant Melanoma

“…In Ger many it was estimated to be 1.8 for 100.000 people in 1966 by Korting [ 11 and 8-9 for 100.000 people in 1988 by Jung [2], Increases of little more or less than fivefold over the past 10-20 years have also been reported in other countries [3,4]. A total of 1,198 patients with melanoma attended the Department of Dermatology of the University of Mainz between 1966 and 1987.…”