Is a personal history of nonmelanoma skin cancer associated with increased or decreased risk of other cancers?
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev. 2014 Mar;23(3):433-6. doi: 10.1158/1055-9965.EPI-13-1309.
Alberg AJ 1, Fischer AH.
1Authors' Affiliations: Hollings Cancer Center and Department of Public Health Sciences, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina; and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland.
Two conflicting hypotheses have been tested concerning the association between a personal history of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and risk of other malignancies. One hypothesis is that as a marker of extensive sunlight exposure and hence vitamin D status, NMSC should be inversely associated with risk of other cancers. Alternatively, under the multiple primary cancer model, NMSC is postulated to be an informative first cancer to study as a marker of increased risk of subsequent primary cancer diagnoses. In this journal issue, Ong and colleagues report the results of a large-scale study in the United Kingdom with findings that NMSC was significantly associated with increased risk of a broad spectrum of other malignancies, with the associations stronger the younger the age of onset of NMSC. These results are consistent with the larger body of evidence on this topic, which is highly asymmetrical in favor of the multiple primary cancer hypothesis.
Two divergent hypotheses have been tested, with the empirical evidence unequivocally indicating that NMSC is a marker of a high cancer risk phenotype. Future research is warranted to better characterize this association, to understand why NMSC is a marker of excess risk of other cancers, and to determine whether this association is clinically relevant.
PMID: 24609852
Note:
- Many diseases associated with vitamin D have viscious cycles in which the disease results in even lower levels of vitamin D, which causes more disease
- Vitamin D provided for some DNA repair of skin from the sun, but it cannot keep up with excessive sun damage
See also VitaminDWiki
- Excessive sun increases cancer all around the body – July 2011
- Decreased risk of non-melanoma skin cancer by working outdoors in Europe – April 2013
- The Protective Role of Vitamin D Signaling in Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer - Nov 2013
- Possible Vitamin D interactions and vicious circles which has the following chart
- Diseases that may be related via low vitamin D which has the following chart and a long list of observed downstream affects