Correlations Between Cutaneous Malignant Melanoma and Other Cancers: An Ecological Study in Forty European Countries

BACKGROUND: The presence of noncutaneous neoplasms does not seem to increase the risk of cutaneous malignant melanoma; however, it seems to be associated with the development of other hematological, brain, breast, uterine, and prostatic neoplasms. An ecological transversal study was conducted to study the geographic association between cutaneous malignant melanoma and 24 localizations of cancer in forty European countries. METHODS: Cancer incidence rates were extracted from GLOBOCAN database of the International Agency for Research on Cancer. We analyzed the age-adjusted and gender-stratified incidence rates for different localizations of cancer in forty European countries and calculated their correlation using Pearson's correlation test. RESULTS: In males, significant correlations were found between cutaneous malignant melanoma with testicular cancer (r = 0.83 [95% confidence interval (CI): 0.68–0.89]), myeloma (r = 0.68 [95% CI: 0.46–0.81]), prostatic carcinoma (r = 0.66 [95% CI: 0.43–0.80]), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) (r = 0.63 [95% CI: 0.39–0.78]). In females, significant correlations were found between cutaneous malignant melanoma with breast cancer (r = 0.80 [95% CI: 0.64–0.88]), colorectal cancer (r = 0.72 [95% CI: 0.52–0.83]), and NHL (r = 0.71 [95% CI: 0.50–0.83]). CONCLUSIONS: These correlations call to conduct new studies about the epidemiology of cancer in general and cutaneous malignant melanoma risk factors in particular.