How Sunlight Causes Skin Cells To Turn Cancerous
Most skin cancers are highly curable, but require surgery that can be painful and scarring.
A new study by Loyola University Health System researchers could lead to alternative treatments that would shrink skin cancer tumors with drugs. The drugs would work by turning on a gene that prevents skin cells from becoming cancerous, said senior author Mitchell Denning, Ph.D.
The study was published Jan. 15, 2010 in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
More than 1 million people in the United States are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. In the new study, researchers examined a type of skin cancer, called squamous cell carcinoma, that accounts for between 200,000 and 300,000 new cases per year.
Squamous cell carcinoma begins in the upper part of the epidermis, the top layer of the skin. Most cases develop on areas that receive lots of sun, such as the face, ear, neck, lips and backs of hands. There are various surgical treatments, including simple excision, curettage and electrodessication (scraping with a surgical tool and treating with an electric needle) and cryosurgery (freezing with liquid nitrogen). Removing large skin cancers can require skin grafts and be disfiguring. Read more
Special Ultrasound Accurately Identifies Skin Cancer
High-frequency ultrasound with elastography can help differentiate between cancerous and benign skin conditions, according to a study presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
“High-frequency ultrasound with elastography has the potential to improve the efficiency of skin cancer diagnosis,” said lead author Eliot L. Siegel, M.D., vice chairman of the Department of Radiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSM) in Baltimore. “It successfully delineated the extent of lesions and was able to provide measurable differentiation among a variety of benign and malignant lesions.”
There are more than one million cases of skin cancer diagnosed in the U.S. every year, according to the American Cancer Society. Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, will account for about 68,720 cases of skin cancer and 11,590 deaths in 2009, despite the fact that with early detection it is highly curable.
Suspicious skin lesions are typically diagnosed by dermatologists and biopsied based on their surface appearance and characteristics. Unfortunately, even to experienced dermatologists, benign and malignant lesions often appear similar visually and on physical examination, and some malignant lesions may have a benign appearance, especially in their early stages. It is not uncommon for patients to have one or more lesions that appear concerning. Read more
Vitamin D Helps Improve Survival From Bowel And Skin Cancer
New research shows higher levels of vitamin D may help improve survival for both bowel and skin cancer patients*.
The results of two studies published in the British Journal of Cancer and Journal of Clinical Oncology found people with higher levels of vitamin D – at the time they were diagnosed – were more likely to survive.
In the first study researchers from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston followed 1017 bowel cancer patients for around nine years.
Using information about UV-B and sunlight exposure, skin type, body-mass index, and vitamin D intake from food and supplements they estimated the amount of vitamin D in patients’ blood at the time of diagnosis.
The results showed that those with higher vitamin D scores after being diagnosed with cancer were 50 per cent less likely to die from the disease – compared to those with lower vitamin D scores.
Professor Kimmie Ng, study author, said: “Our study shows that levels of vitamin D after colorectal cancer diagnosis may be important for survival. We are now planning further research in patients with bowel cancer to see if vitamin D has the same effect, and to investigate how vitamin D works with molecular and genetic pathways in the cell to fight cancer.”
The second study – funded by Cancer Research UK and the National Institutes of Health – found that malignant melanoma patients** with the lowest levels of vitamin D in their blood at the time they were diagnosed were 30 per cent more likely to relapse from the disease than those with the highest levels. Read more