Skin cancer more aggressive in pregnant women

The startling study findings were published January 20 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

For the study, the researchers analyzed information from a database of medical records and studied the cases of 462 women who developed cutaneous melanoma at 49 years old or younger from 1998 to 2012.

“The increasing incidence of melanoma for women younger than 50 years suggests that regular skin checks and self-examinations are warranted”, the authors wrote. These women were also seven times more likely to have their cancer spread and nine times more likely to have a recurrence of their cancer in comparison with other women.

Researchers found that women in the study who were diagnosed with melanoma during pregnancy or within one year of giving birth were more than five times more likely to die from the skin cancer than women with melanoma who were not pregnant.

The study is a stark reminder of the importance of skin cancer prevention.

Melanoma diagnosis during or shortly after pregnancy appears to have a particularly ominous prognosis, as reported by the Huffington Post.

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As per the records of study, 41 women were diagnosed with melanoma while they were pregnant or within one year of the time they gave birth. They advise all the pregnant women to examine their skin regularly and to contact a doctor immediately, if they see anything unusual. It is also during pregnancy when the immune system could be suppressed, which then helps in the development of tumors.

Melanoma rates in the United States doubled between 1982 and 2011, the researchers said.

And 12.5 percent of the women diagnosed with melanoma during or after pregnancy experienced a recurrence of their melanoma during the next 7.5 years, compared with just 1.4 percent of the other women.

Majority were diagnosed with what’s known as stage 0 melanoma, when cancer cells are only in the outer layer of skin, or stage 1, when tumors may penetrate part of the inner layer of skin but are still relatively small.

The researchers “are not saying necessarily that [pregnant women] are more likely to get melanoma” than other women, Gastman told Live Science.

Pregnant women who develop melanoma are five times more likely to die from the disease, the study says.