Family Study of Melanoma in Italy

During the course of a case-control study of melanoma conducted at the Bufalini Hospital, Cesena, Italy in the years 1994-1996, 20 families with 2 or 3 melanoma cases were identified and studied. The area where the study was conducted showed the steepest increase in melanoma incidence in Mediterranean populations between the years 1987 and 1997. Clinical characteristics of melanoma in the families studied were similar to those typically described in fair-skinned populations, but no relevant mutations in the coding regions of known candidate genes from melanoma have been found. Lack of findings could be due to the modest number of families and the small number of affected CMM cases examined. We cannot exclude the possibility of alterations in introns, splicing sites or promoter regions. Also epigenetic factors could affect the expression of the gene products we studied. Alternatively, germline alterations of a gene(s) other than the candidate genes we analyzed may play an important role in melanoma predisposition in this population. A large number of families is needed to test these hypotheses. These additional families could provide an important contribution to the understanding o melanoma development. In fact, this population does not generally have the host characteristics that are usually associated with higher risk for melanoma (e.g., light skin color, red hair, blue eyes, multiple freckles, tendency to sunburn, etc.) but do have a relative high frequency of dysplastic nevi and melanoma. The main objective of this study is to recruit more families at the Bufalini Hospital, Cesena, Italy in order to reach a larger sample size. Recently, 16 potential melanoma-prone families have been identified through patient's or physicians' referrals by the Dermatologists at the Bufalini Hospital. The dermatologists have maintained close relationships with members of these families and are confident that these subjects would be willing to participate in a study if contacted.