Response: Risk of prostate, breast and colorectal cancer after skin cancer diagnosis

✍ Scribed by Isabelle Soerjomataram; Esther de Vries

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 48 KB
• Volume: 124
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.24101

✦ Synopsis

Dear Sir,

Recently, Levi et al. 1 reported the risks of developing a prostate, breast or colorectal cancer after an initial skin cancer diagnosis. The hypothesis was that skin cancer patients would have higher vitamin D levels through higher sun exposure and would, therefore, be at reduced risk of these types of cancer. Contrary to their expectations, overall, a 15-20% higher risk of breast, prostate and colorectal cancer was observed in the cohort as compared with the general population. This is not the first paper to be written about this topic, some of which are summarized in other articles by de Vries et al. 2,3 and Nugent et al. 4 Most other studies obtained similar results to the findings of Levi et al. This might be because skin cancer patients do not have higher vitamin D levels or because vitamin D does not protect against the development of second tumors. However, any decreased or an increased risk might also be obscured by some methodological issues, that are illustrated later.