Trends in mortality rates of cutaneous melanoma in East Asian populations

Abstract

The incidence of cutaneous melanoma (CM) has rapidly increased over the past four decades. CM is often overlooked in East Asian populations due to its low incidence, despite East Asia making up 22% of the world’s population. Since the 1990s, Caucasian populations have seen a plateau in CM mortality rates; however, there is little data investigating the mortality rates of CM in East Asian populations. In this study, the World Health Organization Mortality Database with the joinpoint regression method, and a generalized additive model were used to investigate trends in age standardized mortality rates (ASMRs) of CM in four East Asia regions (Japan, Republic of Korea (Korea), China: Hong Kong (Hong Kong), and Singapore) over the past six decades. In addition, mortality rate ratios by different variables (i.e., sex, age group, and region) were analyzed. Our results showed ASMRs of CM in East Asia significantly increased non-linearly over the past six decades. The joinpoint regression method indicated women had greater annual percentage changes than men in Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong. Men had significantly greater mortality rate ratio (1.51, 95% CI [1.48–1.54]) than women. Mortality rate ratios in 30−59 and 60+ years were significant greater than in the 0−29 years. Compared to Hong Kong, mortality rate ratio was 0.72 (95% CI [0.70–0.74]) times, 0.73 (95% CI [0.70–0.75]) times, and 1.02 (95% CI [1.00–1.05]) times greater in Japan, Korea, and Singapore, respectively. Although there is limited research investigating CM mortality rates in East Asia, results from the present study indicate that there is a significant growth in the ASMRs of CM in East Asian populations, highlighting a need to raise awareness of CM in the general population.

Epidemiology of Melanoma

“…The US mortality rate has slowed to a 0.20% annual increase (19). Similar trends have also been reported in East Asian populations (101).…”

Comparing the genomes of cutaneous melanoma tumors to commercially available cell lines

“…Incidence of cutaneous melanoma in the United States occurred at a rate of 26.8 per 100,000 males and 16.6 per 100,000 females from 2009–2013 [ 1 ]. Since the 1960′s, incidence of cutaneous melanoma has continued to increase in Caucasian populations North America and Europe with a stable mortality rate, while mortality rates have increased in East Asian populations despite relatively low incidence [ 2 , 3 ]. Additionally, African American populations with cutaneous melanoma have lower survival rates relative to Caucasians despite having lower rates of occurrence [ 4 ].…”

Vasculogenic mimicry as a poor diagnostic and prognostic indicator in patients with malignant‎ melanoma: A ‎systematic review and meta-analysis

“…But considering that our study was limited to a small sample size of cases in the Caucasian group (475 cases), more large-size studies among Caucasian MM population should be performed to obtain a comprehensive result [61]. It is known that VM+ tumor samples profiling could be more accurate in the Asian population compared to the Caucasian population [62].…”

“…Interestingly, our results proposed VM as a promising accurate biomarker and target for MM diagnosis and therapeutics in Asian patients than that in Caucasian patients, with a pooled sensitivity of 91% and specificity of 70.5%. Lifestyle factors such as UV radiation exposure and nutrition are synergistically effective on the prevalence of MM [61,62]. Compared to Caucasians, Asian MM patients are diagnosed at older ages; hence, we face a large population of old MM patients [4,12].…”