An Exponential Model for Melanoma Mortality Trends

Abstract: Cancer incidence and mortality trends in the Nordic countries show that most cancer types have been increasing for a long time, while a few show decreasing trends. The object of this study was to investigate melanoma mortality trends to see if there is a specific year for the trend breaks, possibly indicating a common causing factor affecting most of the population from the same time. The results clearly show that melanoma mortality started to increase exponentially by the time lived as an adult since 1955 and that the trends easily can be modeled and used for projection purpose. The findings are in support of earlier studies, suggesting reduced or temporarily disturbed DNA repair capacity due to a population-wide environmental change to be the main cause to increasing cancer rates in general, and increasing melanoma incidence and mortality in particular.