Organ Transplant Patients Face Higher Risk of Skin Cancer

Organ transplant patients face higher risk of skin cancer according to a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle online (SFGATE):

Studies show the medications increase the odds that transplant patients will acquire skin cancer by up to 100 times compared with the general population, and their risks increase every year there on out. Twenty-five percent of them will develop the potentially fatal disease at five years, and at least half will be diagnosed with it after 10 years.

“It’s really devastating for transplant patients, given a new lease on life from their transplant, to discover they’re struggling with skin cancer,” said Dr. Sarah Arron, director of UCSF’s High Risk Skin Cancer Clinic.

.......About 250,000 organ recipients are living in the U.S., and Arron said she hopes the research will provide insight into the broader population of people who have been diagnosed with skin cancer.

“What can we learn about skin cancer in the transplant patient that can help us understand why skin cancer forms in the general population?” Arron said. “We’re learning how the immune system fails in a transplant patient and allows tumors to grow so we can identify in a non-transplant patient how that immune system can fail in the same way.”