The lack of a relationship between atopic dermatitis and nonmelanoma skin cancers.

Abstract

Very little has been published on whether a relationship exists between atopic dermatitis (AD) and skin cancer. The goal of this study was to investigate whether individuals with AD are more likely than other patients with dermatologic conditions to develop nonmelanoma skin cancer. This was a case-control, mailed-survey study. Of those contacted, 69.8% (3207 of 4591) filled out the survey. Of the control patients, 18.4% (254) had a history of AD as defined by the United Kingdom Working Party diagnosis criteria and composed 13.7% (210) of the cases. The unadjusted odds ratio of AD to nonmelanoma skin cancer was 0.70 (95% confidence interval 0.57-0.85). After fully adjusting for age, sex, ethnicity, and topical steroid use the odds ratio was 0.78 (0.61, 0.98). Using different definitions of AD had little effect on this result. It does not appear that patients with a history of AD are more likely to develop nonmelanoma skin cancers than other patients with dermatologic conditions.