LONDON — Melanoma, the deadliest kind of skin cancer, is now the most common cancer in young British women, the country’s leading cancer organization said Wednesday.
Skin cancer has overtaken cervical cancer as the top cancer striking women in their 20s, according to the latest data from Cancer Research United Kingdom.
The trend is particularly worrying because younger people are not generally those most susceptible to melanoma. Rates of skin cancer are typically highest in people over age 75.
But experts worry that increasing numbers of younger people being diagnosed with skin cancer could be the start of a dangerous trend. Women in their 20s make up a small percentage of all patients diagnosed with melanoma in Britain, but nearly a third of all cases occur in people younger than 50.
Based on current numbers, Cancer Research U.K. predicts that melanoma will become the fourth-most-common cancer for men and women of all ages by 2024 and that cases will jump from about 9,000 a year to more than 15,500.
Cancer experts attribute the rising number of skin-cancer cases largely to the surge in people using tanning salons.
