Excessive sunlight exposure is commonly associated with skin cancer. At the present moment, Australia is ranked number one in having the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world. A whopping figure of more than 10,000 cases are being reported each year.
Recently, research conducted on melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has shown that excessive sunlight exposure is not the only contributing factor to the disease. Researchers believe that there may be another important factor that could allow them to pinpoint a person’s susceptibility to melanoma. It is GENES. They have discovered two gene variants that play a role in increasing a person’s risk of getting melanoma, and these gene variants act by increasing the number of moles on a person’s body. Though the chances of a person carrying even one gene variant is very slim, research has shown that should a person carry just one of the two genes, this will increase his/her risk in developing melanoma by 25%. A person who carries both gene variants, will increase his/her risk to about 50%. At present, these findings are still very new, and will require a lot more research. As researchers now have a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between melanoma development and mole formation, this knowledge gained is hopefully the beginning of many more new discoveries.
Though the two newly discovered gene variants will enable researchers to develop some form of diagnostic or screen tests, they hope that in the next 2 to 3 years, they would be able to collect a pool of 10-20 different gene variants. With this, researchers will be able to look at them simultaneously to calculate a person’s risk to melanoma.
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http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/07/06/2617446.htm
