Cutaneous Melanoma, Hodgkin's Lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma: Common Risk Factors?

AIM: An epidemiological cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the association between cutaneous melanoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 40 European countries.

METHODS

Incidence rates were obtained from the database of the International Agency for Research of Cancer (IARC). We analyzed age-adjusted and gender-stratified incidence rates for cutaneous melanoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 40 European countries. All European countries included had registration systems that fulfilled the quality criteria of IARC. Normal distribution of the variables was examined using Kolmorov-Smirnov test before calculating their correlations using Pearson's Correlation test.

RESULTS

In males, positive correlations were found between cutaneous melanoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma (r=0.14, p=0.38), and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r=0.64, p<0.001). In females, negative correlation was found between cutaneous melanoma and Hodgkin's lymphoma (r=0.28, p=0.08), however, positive correlation was found between cutaneous melanoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (r=0.72, p<0.001).

CONCLUSION

Our findings raise the hypothesis about common risk factors for cutaneous melanoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. New epidemiological and genetic studies are needed to identify possible common risk factors.