Melanoma is also widespread in Europe, where it registers tens of thousands of cases each year, with increasing prevalence and high levels of mortality, as well as very high and rising health care costs.
All this has set in motion new efforts in terms of new and faster diagnostic criteria for early detection of the disease, new treatment systems based on innovative therapies, but most importantly, the organization of monitoring networks for skin cancer, nevi, and specifically melanoma.
The disease, a skin cancer, needs to be looked at epidemiologically by distinguishing between the types of melanoma that result in survival of those affected from the types that result in life-threatening.
At the clinical and epidemiological levels, one wonders about the reason for the increasing prevalence of melanoma among adolescents and young people, among whom the incidence of the disease, as found by observational studies, appears particularly high.
So many cases of melanoma affect children and adolescents but also young women and men, among whom the disease is themost common type ofcancer in those age groups.
What, then, are the factors that determine this wide spread?
- Sun exposure without protection, such as protective creams or opaque clothing.
- Tanning beds and “sun” lamps.
- Genetic factors.
Since it is very common among young women, but also increasingly among teenagers and young men, an idea of physical attractiveness and tanned “look,” the idea of beauty and elegance, particularly propagated by the media, cinema, TV, social networks, it follows that many young people use rapid systems such as tanning lamps, ultraviolet sunbeds, to acquire an adequate tan.
Apart from the dictates of fashion, for many years during the summer season both women and men, lying on beach beds, expose themselves with uncovered skin to full sunbathing for many hours, with the belief that they have also acquired with sunbathing a health reserve.
As with many cancers, genetic factors may be among the causes for melanoma, where certain genes may be damaged and mutate resulting in a disruption of cell function , which becomes abnormal due to inappropriate protein synthesis. Melanoma can also be the result of abnormal cell proliferation. Genes can also be damaged by UV radiation.
More targeted oncology research together with better prevention, screening and monitoring systems for melanoma in the adolescent and young adult population can certainly help to achieve earlier diagnosis and more effective therapies, but it will require a turnaround in youth culture and social mores, achievable only by awareness campaigns, schools and families, for a real fight against the spread of melanoma.
