Study Finds Racial Differences in Second Primary Melanoma

TOPLINE:

White patients have the highest absolute risk for a second primary melanoma, while Black and Asian or Pacific Islander patients have the highest relative risk compared with the general population, a study analyzing Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) data report.

METHODOLOGY:

• Researchers evaluated 546,756 patients with a first primary cutaneous melanoma diagnosis from 17 SEER registries between 2000 and 2019.
• The primary outcome was a second primary cutaneous melanoma diagnosis occurring ≥ 2 months after the initial diagnosis.
• Researchers calculated standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) and excess absolute risks and compared the observed counts of second melanoma with the expected counts in the general population.
• Of all patients, 0.2% had American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.6% had Asian or Pacific Islander, 0.4% had Black, 3.1% had Hispanic, and 96% had White race and ethnicity.

TAKEAWAY:

• White patients had the highest absolute incidence of first (47.67 per 100,000 people) and second (1457.40 per 100,000 person-years) primary melanoma.
• Black patients had the highest relative risk for a second primary melanoma (SIR, 264.39) compared with the general population, followed by Asian or Pacific Islander patients (SIR, 196.68), American Indian or Alaska Native (SIR, 48.47), and White patients (SIR, 11.63).
• White patients had the highest absolute numbers of excess second primary melanomas per 100,000 person-years (1332.07), followed by American Indian or Alaska Native (1250.34), Hispanic (944.33), Black (823.91), and Asian or Pacific Islander patients (769.66).

IN PRACTICE:

“While we found elevated relative risks of second primary melanoma among racial and ethnic minority groups vs the general population, measures of absolute risk were far less substantial, illustrating that reporting only relative measures, as done previously, is potentially misleading,” the authors wrote. “These findings highlight the special care that must be taken when interpreting analyses of rare events, such as second primary melanomas, in racially and ethnically minoritized populations,” Mya L. Roberson, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Ivo Abraham, PhD, of the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, editors at JAMA Dermatology, wrote in an accompanying editor’s note.

SOURCE:

The study was led by Shoshana Zhang, BS, Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, and was published online on October 9 in JAMA Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS:

Study limitations included potential misclassification of recurring previous melanoma as a second primary melanoma and surveillance bias.

DISCLOSURES:

The authors did not disclose a study funding source. One author disclosed receiving grants from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Dermatology Foundation Public Health Career Development Award, the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, and Meredith’s Mission for Melanoma outside of the submitted work.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.