Site Editor
Soo Park, MD
Soo Park, MD
Posted: Friday, May 20, 2022
According to Volker Winkler, PhD, of the Heidelberg Institute of Global Health, Germany, and colleagues, ethnic Germans who immigrated to Germany from the countries of the former Soviet Union may have had a relatively high amount of ultraviolet (UV) light exposure. A retrospective, register-based cohort study, which was published in the journal Archives of Public Health, evaluated the risk of non-melanoma skin cancer in this population of re-settlers.
“Female re-settlers have a higher risk [of being] diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancer than the general German population,” the investigators commented. “Based on the observed distribution of tumor location, it is suspected that UV exposure contributed significantly to this risk.”
The investigators focused on 18,619 re-settlers who immigrated to the Federal German state of Saarland from the countries of the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 2005. Using the Saarland Cancer Registry, all new cases of non-melanoma skin cancer diagnosed in this cohort (n = 120) and the general German population (n = 18,575) between 1990 and 2007 were classified according to sex, histology, and tumor location.
Female re-settlers seemed to experience a higher incidence of non-melanoma skin cancer in UV-exposed skin areas than the general female population (standardized incidence ratio = 1.31); accordingly, there also appeared to be a higher proportion of squamous cell carcinomas. Based on a regression analysis, among re-settlers, the risk of developing tumors in UV-exposed skin areas was increased by a factor of 2.16 compared with the general population.
“Future studies should include the period after the introduction of skin cancer screening to show whether specific services are needed for the group of re-settlers,” the investigators concluded.
Disclosure: The study authors reported no conflicts of interest.
JNCCN Spotlights
Resources
For your Patients
