40 Fun Facts About Skin Cancer

Which skin cancer, typically a shiny, pearly bump on sun-exposed skin, is the most common type of all?

Basal cell carcinoma accounts for about 80% of skin cancers other than melanoma, yet it grows slowly and is unlikely to spread or kill.

In the ABCDE checklist for spotting melanoma on the skin, what does the letter A stand for?

Asymmetry means the shape of one half of a mole does not match the other half, whereas a harmless mole is usually an even round or oval.

Which musician was diagnosed in 1977 with a melanoma under a toenail and died of the disease in 1981?

Bob Marley rejected his doctors' advice to have the toe amputated, citing his religious beliefs, and died in May 1981 at the age of 36.

Which Southern Hemisphere country has the highest per-capita rate of melanoma in the world?

Australia was settled largely by migrants from Europe, whose fair skin is poorly adapted to the country's direct, intense sunlight.

Which French fashion designer is credited with making suntans chic after a 1920s trip to the Riviera?

Coco Chanel is said to have caught the sun by accident, and her fans copied the look; before the 1920s, tanned skin was associated with outdoor laborers.

Which former US president said in 2015 that melanoma had spread to his brain, yet was cancer-free within months?

Jimmy Carter was 90 when he shared the diagnosis; his scans showed no cancer by that December, and he went on to live to 100.

In 1775 surgeon Percivall Pott traced scrotal skin cancer to soot, the first cancer linked to which occupation?

Chimney sweeps gave medicine its first proof that something in the environment could cause cancer, and the disease was later named after their trade.

Variants of the MC1R gene raise the risk of melanoma and also produce which natural hair color?

Red hair has far more of the pigment pheomelanin than of dark eumelanin, and usually comes with skin that is sensitive to ultraviolet light.

In the ABCDE melanoma checklist, the letter D warns about moles wider than which everyday object?

A pencil eraser is roughly six millimeters across, the width at which the checklist's D, for diameter, says a mole deserves a doctor's look.

Which fairy-tale bird gives its name to the warning sign of a mole that looks unlike a person's other moles?

The ugly duckling sign works because one person's moles tend to look like one another, so the odd one out is more likely to be a melanoma.

The UV Index used in weather forecasts around the world was invented in 1992 by scientists in which country?

Canada became the first country to issue next-day UV forecasts in May 1992, and the World Health Organization adopted the scale as the global standard two years later.

The SPF number on a sunscreen bottle measures protection against which rays, the main cause of sunburn?

UVB is far better at burning skin than longer-wave UVA, so an SPF figure alone says little about protection from the latter.

Which nutrient does human skin make in sunlight, a benefit doctors weigh against the risk of skin cancer?

Vitamin D forms in skin under the Sun's rays, and even high-SPF sunscreen lets enough of them through for the body to keep making it.

Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer causing purple skin patches, was among the first illnesses linked to which disease?

AIDS made the once-rare tumor widely known in the 1980s, and the antiretroviral drugs that control HIV both prevent and often treat it.

Which white compound, found in calamine lotion and diaper creams, blocks UV rays in mineral sunscreens?

Zinc oxide absorbs a broader span of ultraviolet light than any other sunscreen ingredient approved in the United States.

Which handheld instrument, pairing a light with a tenfold magnifier, do doctors use to examine a suspicious mole?

Dermatoscope checks by trained doctors detect melanoma more accurately than unaided inspection, with sensitivity up to 20% higher.

Which procedure do doctors rely on to confirm whether a suspicious patch or mole is skin cancer?

A biopsy removes tissue so that it can be checked for cancer cells, which is the only way to diagnose melanoma for certain.

On which part of the body does melanoma most often appear in women, in contrast to the back in men?

The legs lead in women and the back in men, though melanoma can on rare occasions begin away from the skin, in the mouth or the intestines.

Which 1987 ozone treaty is forecast to prevent over 280 million skin cancer cases in the United States alone?

The Montreal Protocol phased out the chemicals that were thinning the ozone layer, which shields the ground from the Sun's ultraviolet rays.

Which skin cancer operation, devised in 1938, removes a tumor in stages that are each checked under a microscope?

Mohs surgery is named after surgeon Frederic Mohs; checking every stage lets the surgeon keep a very narrow margin and spare healthy skin.

Xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare disorder that makes sunlight dangerous, stops skin cells repairing damage to what?

Their DNA goes unrepaired after ultraviolet exposure, so people with the condition, nicknamed children of the night, must avoid daylight entirely.

Melanoma in situ, the earliest stage of the disease, is confined to which layer of the skin?

Epidermis, the skin's outer layer, is where the pigment cells sit; an in situ melanoma has yet to push down into the dermis beneath.

On the Fitzpatrick scale of skin tones, which category always burns in the sun and never tans?

Type I is the palest of the six categories on the scale, which American dermatologist Thomas Fitzpatrick devised in 1975 to predict how skin responds to ultraviolet light.

Which rough, sandpaper-like patch caused by years of sun can turn into squamous cell skin cancer?

Actinic keratosis, also known as solar keratosis, has up to a 20% chance of progressing when untreated, so doctors recommend having it treated.

To learn whether a melanoma has begun to spread, surgeons remove and test the 'sentinel' one of which structures?

Lymph nodes are tested because the sentinel node is the first one that cancer cells leaving a tumor are likely to reach, so it shows whether the disease has traveled.

Years of drinking water contaminated with which poisonous element can cause skin cancer?

Arsenic reaches more than 200 million people at unsafe levels through their drinking water, mostly from naturally contaminated groundwater.

Horses of which coat color are so prone to melanoma that up to 80% develop it during their lifetime?

Gray horses are born darker and lose their coat pigment with age, and the gene behind that fading also raises their risk of melanoma.

Which sunscreen brand traces its origins to a lotion that pharmacist Benjamin Green created in 1944?

Coppertone began with Green, who as a wartime airman had also made a petroleum-jelly sun barrier for US soldiers in the Pacific tropics.

On the UV Index, which official label applies to a reading of 11 or higher, the top category?

Extreme sits one band above very high, which covers readings of 8 to 10, and signals the greatest risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure.

Melanoma usually starts in the skin, but in which sense organ is it the most common cancer to arise in adults?

The eye has pigment cells in its uvea, the layer that includes the iris, and the tumors that begin there are called uveal melanomas.

Which French physician, famed for inventing the stethoscope, was the first to describe melanoma as a disease?

René Laennec first lectured on the disease in 1804 as a medical student, twelve years before he devised his famous listening tube.

About 40% of melanomas carry an activating mutation in which gene, the target of the drug vemurafenib?

BRAF normally helps to regulate cell growth, but its most common mutation locks the protein switched on; vemurafenib blocks that faulty signal.

Marjolin's ulcer is an aggressive squamous cell skin cancer that develops in which kind of old injury?

Burn scars and other long-standing wounds, such as venous ulcers and radiotherapy scars, can turn cancerous where skin stays chronically inflamed.

Which Scottish surgeon is reported to have been the first to operate on a metastatic melanoma, in 1787?

John Hunter did not know what he had removed; the preserved tumor was identified as melanoma only in 1968, after examination under a microscope.

T-VEC, a melanoma drug injected straight into tumors, is an engineered form of the germ behind which ailment?

Cold sores come from herpes simplex, and the engineered version multiplies inside cancer cells until they burst; US regulators approved it in 2015.

The modern tanning bed, invented in 1975, was the work of a scientist from which European country?

Germany's Friedrich Wolff had been treating athletes with UV light; his beds went on sale in the United States in 1978, and the indoor tanning industry was born.

About 80% of Merkel cell carcinomas, a rare skin cancer, carry which kind of microbe, identified in 2008?

A virus called Merkel cell polyomavirus was identified by a University of Pittsburgh team, and most adults carry it without any symptoms.

Ipilimumab, approved in 2011 for advanced melanoma, works by taking the brakes off which part of the body?

The immune system is normally restrained by a protein called CTLA-4; blocking it frees T cells to attack tumors, work that earned a 2018 Nobel Prize.

Which country became the first in the world to ban cosmetic tanning beds outright, doing so in 2009?

Brazil's health surveillance agency acted twelve years after France became the first country to bar under-18s from indoor tanning.

Which inherited condition, marked by little or no skin pigment, sharply raises the risk of skin cancer?

Albinism leaves skin without the pigment that blocks ultraviolet rays, so people with the condition are advised to have yearly full-skin checks.