Increase in Rare Skin-Related Cancers

(June 22, 2010) - They are rare cancers but they appear to be increasing in number, dramatically. Cutaneous appendageal carcinomas - tumors of the skin appendages such as hair, nails, sweat glands and mammary glands - appear to be increasing in the United States, according to a report in the Archives of Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. (Read about "Skin Cancer") Because of their rarity, studies of these cancers have been limited.

The cancers now strike 5.1 per 1 million people per year, with men more likely to develop one of the cancers than women. The most common type was apocrine-eccrine carcinoma, or cancer of the sweat glands. Incidence rates increased with age, with a 100-fold difference between individuals age 20 to 29 years and those age 80 years and older.

Cutaneous appendageal carcinomas also became more common over time, with a 150-percent increase in incidence between 1978 to 1982 and 2002 to 2005. Rates of sweat gland cancers increased 170 percent and sebaceous carcinomas, cancers of glands in the eyelid, increased 217 percent. Overall, five-year survival rates were 99 percent for localized disease and 43 percent for disease that had spread to another part of the body.

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