Height, nevus count, and risk of cutaneous malignant melanoma: Results from 2 large cohorts of US women.

Abstract

Taller individuals are at higher risk of melanoma. To prospectively investigate the association of height with nevus count and melanoma and estimate the proportion of height-melanoma association explained by nevus count among white participants from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS) and Nurses' Health Study 2 (NHS2). We used Cox proportional hazards regression and multinomial logistic regression for data analyses, with adjustment of potential confounders in the multivariate model. We included 82,468 and 106,069 women from NHS and NHS2, respectively. The hazard ratio was 1.21 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.12-1.31) for the association between every 10-cm increase in height and melanoma. Compared with women with no nevi, the odds ratios (95% CIs) associated with a 10-cm increase in height were 1.35 (95% CI 1.23-1.48) in the NHS and 1.12 (95% CI 1.09-1.15) in the NHS2 for women with greater than or equal to 10 moles. The proportion of excess melanoma risk associated with each 10-cm increase in height explained by nevus count was 8.03% in the NHS and 10.22% in the NHS2. Self-reported height and nevus count. Mole counts were limited to 1 arm or both legs. Nevus count is an important explanatory factor for the excess risk of melanoma among taller white women.