Vishal Patel is an expert at treating skin cancer. Demand for his services increases every year; he took some time from his busy schedule at GW's School of Medicine and Health Sciences to tell us if global warming can help explain why.
Skin cancer rates are increasing for a number of reasons. One is because we have an aging population. People are living longer and being more active, and also taking more medicines. Because medications have potential side effects or interactions with the immune system, that’s a relative push. As we get older, our immune system is weaker.
The other big piece is that people are generally healthier, living longer, and they go to the doctor for a variety of other reasons, especially to the dermatologist. And so we are looking more for things, and then we find things that maybe would not have been found had patients not been as healthy and died of another comorbidity.
Combine our aging population with the fact of our sun-loving lifestyle. UV rays from the sun are a form of radiation, a carcinogen. And so, just like any other carcinogens, like cigarette smoking, anything in excess can be detrimental. Patients who seek out sun exposure, whether they’re a beach bum, just doing a lot of outdoor activities or simply wanting to be tanned, that increases the rate of the DNA damage that is going to come up later. We’ve had decades of that with the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, so we’re seeing the results now. Click here to read more.
