TOPLINE

Patients with a prior history of keratinocyte carcinoma (KC) had more than four times the odds of developing mucosal melanoma (MM) compared with patients without melanoma, according to a case-control study.

METHODOLOGY

• Researchers conducted a retrospective, multi-institutional, nested case-control study using data from the Veterans Health Administration and Mass General Brigham health system from 2000 to 2025.
• A total of 517 patients with MM (median age, 69 years; 33.7% women) were matched 1:4 with 2068 patients with cutaneous melanoma (CM) controls and 2068 participants without melanoma (control group).
• Proportions of Black patients (4.6% vs 0.1%) and Hispanic patients (3.3% vs 0.7%) were higher in the MM than in the CM group.
• Overall, 17.4% of patients with MM and 21.6% of those with CM had a history of KC compared with 5.1% of individuals without melanoma.

TAKEAWAY

• Patients with prior KC were more likely to develop MM compared with those without melanoma (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 4.28; P < .001).
• This association persisted after excluding lip cases, and was consistent across non-vulvovaginal anogenital, sinonasal, and upper aerodigestive tract sites.
• Patients with MM were more likely to be women compared with those with CM (aOR, 2.73; P < .001) and without melanoma (aOR, 2.00; P < .001). 

IN PRACTICE

"Pending further validation, clinical implications may merit increased attention to mucosal sites during skin exams for patients with KC history and/or those from certain racial/ethnic backgrounds, particularly since MM presents with non-specific symptoms requiring high clinical suspicion," the authors of the study wrote.

SOURCE

The study was co-led by Linden B. Huhmann, MS, PhD, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston; Jonathan C. Hwang, BS, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh; and Charles Lu, BA, BS, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. It was published online as a brief report on September 9 in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS

The study was limited by its retrospective design, potential incomplete capture of outside care, residual surveillance bias, reduced power for subsite analyses, inability to assess viral exposures such as human papillomavirus, possible coding misclassification, lack of family history, and limited generalizability of the results to a broader population.

DISCLOSURES

The study was supported by the Department of Defense and the Department of Veteran Affairs. One author reported receiving institutional funding from Bayer and Merck.

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