Background: Patients with skin lesions suspicious for skin cancer or atypical melanocytic nevi of uncertain malignant potential often present to dermatologists, who may have variable dermoscopy triage clinical experience.
Objective: To evaluate the clinical utility of a digital dermoscopy image-based artificial intelligence algorithm (DDI-AI device) on the diagnosis and management of skin cancers by dermatologists.
Methods: Thirty-six United States board-certified dermatologists evaluated 50 clinical images and 50 digital dermoscopy images of the same skin lesions (25 malignant and 25 benign), first without and then with knowledge of the DDI-AI device output.
J Am Acad Dermatol
October 2024
Incorporation of dermoscopy and artificial intelligence (AI) is improving healthcare professionals' ability to diagnose melanoma earlier, but these algorithms often suffer from a "black box" issue, where decision-making processes are not transparent, limiting their utility for training healthcare providers. To address this, an automated approach for generating melanoma imaging biomarker cues (IBCs), which mimics the screening cues used by expert dermoscopists, was developed. This study created a one-minute learning environment where dermatologists adopted a sensory cue integration algorithm to combine a single IBC with a risk score built on many IBCs, then immediately tested their performance in differentiating melanoma from benign nevi.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLicensed nonmedical, skin-aware professionals (e.g., hairdressers, massage therapists, etc.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPigment Cell Melanoma Res
November 2023
Melanoma is a significant cause of cancer death, despite being detectable without specialized or invasive technologies. Understanding barriers to preventive behaviors such as skin self-examination (SSE) could help to define interventions for increasing the frequency of early detection. To determine melanoma knowledge and beliefs across three high-incidence US states, 15,000 surveys were sent to a population-representative sample.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Children of parents who had melanoma are more likely to develop skin cancer themselves owing to shared familial risks. The prevention of sunburns and promotion of sun-protective behaviors are essential to control cancer among these children. The Family Lifestyles, Actions and Risk Education (FLARE) intervention will be delivered as part of a randomized controlled trial to support parent-child collaboration to improve sun safety outcomes among children of melanoma survivors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncorporation of melanoma prevention behaviors into daily lifestyles is difficult. Data suggest that high school educational programs on skin cancer prevention can be successful and should incorporate evidence-based teaching and learning strategies to achieve greatest impact. The goal of this systematic review is to describe evidence-based educational practices for a high-school melanoma curriculum through a comprehensive review of the literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Therapy for advanced melanoma has transformed during the past decade, but early detection and prognostic assessment of cutaneous melanoma (CM) remain paramount goals. Best practices for screening and use of pigmented lesion evaluation tools and gene expression profile (GEP) testing in CM remain to be defined.
Objective: To provide consensus recommendations on optimal screening practices and prebiopsy diagnostic, postbiopsy diagnostic, and prognostic assessment of CM.
Antigen-specific CD8 T cell accumulation in tumors is a prerequisite for effective immunotherapy, and yet the mechanisms of lymphocyte transit are not well defined. Here we show that tumor-associated lymphatic vessels control T cell exit from tumors via the chemokine CXCL12, and intratumoral antigen encounter tunes CXCR4 expression by effector CD8 T cells. Only high-affinity antigen downregulates CXCR4 and upregulates the CXCL12 decoy receptor, ACKR3, thereby reducing CXCL12 sensitivity and promoting T cell retention.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTR1 and other selenoproteins have paradoxical effects in melanocytes and melanomas. Increasing selenoprotein activity with supplemental selenium in a mouse model of UV-induced melanoma prevents oxidative damage to melanocytes and delays melanoma tumor formation. However, TR1 itself is positively associated with progression in human melanomas and facilitates metastasis in melanoma xenografts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Risk-based thresholds to guide management are undefined in the treatment of primary cutaneous melanoma but are essential to advance the field from traditional stage-based treatment to more individualized care.
Methods: To estimate treatment risk thresholds, hypothetical clinical melanoma scenarios were developed and a stratified random sample was distributed to expert melanoma clinicians via an anonymous web-based survey. Scenarios provided a defined 5-year risk of recurrence and asked for recommendations regarding clinical follow-up, imaging, and adjuvant therapy.
Background: Little is known about how members of cancer-prone families think about genetic determinism and whether personal behavior can amplify or counter genetic risk for disease.
Purpose: Understanding how people think about the impact of personal behavior on disease risk may inform communications about genetic risks and their management.
Methods: We assessed three sets of beliefs about the impact of behavior on genetic risk-interactive (unhealthful behaviors can amplify genetic risk), subtractive (healthful behaviors can reduce genetic risk), and deterministic (genes primarily determine health outcomes)-among 114 unaffected members of melanoma-prone families receiving genetic counseling (51.
Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) exposure is the most important modifiable risk factor for skin cancer development. Although sunscreen and sun-protective clothing are essential tools to minimize UVR exposure, few studies have compared the two modalities head-to-head. This study evaluates the UV-protective capacity of four modern, sun-protective textiles and two broad-spectrum, organic sunscreens ( 30 and 50).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPigment-producing melanocytes overcome frequent oxidative stress in their physiological role of protecting the skin against the deleterious effects of solar UV irradiation. This is accomplished by the activity of several endogenous antioxidant systems, including the thioredoxin antioxidant system, in which thioredoxin reductase 1 (TR1) plays an important part. To determine whether TR1 contributes to the redox regulation of melanocyte homeostasis, we have generated a selective melanocytic Txnrd1-knockout mouse model (Txnrd1), which exhibits a depigmentation phenotype consisting of variable amelanotic ventral spotting and reduced pigmentation on the extremities (tail tip, ears, and paws).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe success of immunotherapy with immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in a subset of individuals has been very exciting. However, in many cancers, responses to current ICIs are modest and are seen only in a small subsets of patients. Herein, a widely applicable approach that increases the benefit of ICIs is reported.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Since 2011, the therapeutic landscape of melanoma has changed dramatically because of the adoption of immune checkpoint inhibitor and targeted therapies. The authors sought to quantify the effects of these changes on short-term treatment costs by comparing the first-year cancer-attributable costs in novel (2011-2015) and historical (2004-2010) treatment eras.
Methods: The authors estimated the first-year cancer-attributable and out-of-pocket (OOP) costs by cancer stage at diagnosis by using a case-control approach.