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Alternative
Health News
Melanin Content of Hair Predicts Risk for Melanoma
Reuters
By Will Boggs, MD
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) May 08 - Measuring the amount of melanin in a hair
sample independently predicts an individual's risk for melanoma, according to a
report in the May 15th issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.
"Melanin determination, as a cumulative indicator of skin phenotype, could be
used for health advising about screening strategies (i.e., regular skin
examination when proved effective) or personally targeted sun avoidance advice,"
Dr. Stefano Rosso told Reuters Health.
Dr. Rosso from the Piedmont Cancer Registry, Turin, Italy and associates note
that melanin concentrates in hair, and can be measured by various means. They
investigated whether melanin content in hair, as measured by three methods, is a
risk indicator for melanoma based on data from the Helios 2 case-control study
of skin cancer patients recruited from 14 European centers.
The researchers used three methods to measure melanin content in hair
samples, and found that using high performance liquid chromatography to measure
2,3,5-pyrroletricarboxylic acid (PTCA), formed after the oxidation of eumelanin,
gave the strongest results.
After adjusting for hair color, eye color, and number of nevi, the odds ratio
for melanoma with a PTCA concentration below 85 ng/mg was 4.4, the team reports.
Near infrared spectroscopy, which the researchers describe as "a less precise
but faster and cheaper type of measurement of eumelanin," was associated with an
odds ratio of 2.3, but this was not statistically significant after controlling
for other risk factors.
Nevertheless, Dr. Rosso said, his group wants to develop near infrared
spectroscopy further, so that it "could be also used for in vivo measurements."
The investigators note that PTCA determination "also opens the opportunity
for studying the role of melanin in skin tumor etiology at a population level."
"We plan to further extend melanin measurement to squamous-cell carcinoma and
basal-cell carcinoma in the same case-control setting," Dr. Rosso added.
Am J Epidemiol 2007;165:1170-1177
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