BLACK-WHITE DIFFERENCES IN RISK FOR CUTANEOUS, OCULAR, AND VISCERAL MELANOMAS

Fair-skinned individuals have a much higher risk of cutaneous and ocul ar melanomas than dark-skinned individuals, possibly reflecting a prot ective effect of melanin against sun exposure. There are some reasons to believe that the effect of sunlight exposure is indirect (i.e., sun light stimulates growth factor production, which then stimulates melan ocytic proliferation, leading to melanoma). Visceral melanomas are ext remely rare, and little is known about them. This study used US data o n 25 184 melanoma cases to investigate the White-Black ratio for visce ral melanoma and did not find a disproportionality similar to that for cutaneous and ocular melanomas. The findings support the hypothesis t hat the sunlight effect on melanoma is primarily direct.