Teenage acne linked to melanoma in women

(HealthDay)—There appears to be an association between teenage acne and melanoma, according to a study published online Jan. 8 in Cancer.

Mingfeng Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., from the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, and colleagues followed 99,128 female nurses in the Nurses' Health Study II cohort for 20 years to examine the risk of eight specific cancers.

The researchers found that among women with a history of severe teenage acne, the relative risk increased for melanoma after adjustment for previously known risk factors for each cancer, with a multivariable-adjusted hazard ratio of 1.44. In an independent melanoma case-control study involving 930 cases and 1,026 controls, the association was replicated (multivariable-adjusted odds ratio, 1.27). In both studies, those with teenage acne were more likely to have moles (52.7 versus 50.1 percent [P < 0.001] in the cohort study; 55.2 versus 45.1 percent [P = 0.004] in the case-control study).

"Our findings suggest that a history of teenage acne might be a novel risk factor for melanoma independent from the known factors, which supports a need for continued investigation of these relationships," the authors write.