Original articleMerkel cell carcinoma: Current US incidence and projected increases based on changing demographics
Section snippets
SEER Database
Deidentified national registry data from the SEER-18 Database25, 26 was accessed using SEER*Stat 8.3.2 software on February 2017. Incidence data were collected from a SEER-18 rate session. The SEER-18 Registry contains information from registries that are geographically represented across the United States (Atlanta, Connecticut, Detroit, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, San Francisco-Oakland, Seattle-Puget Sound, Los Angeles, San Jose-Monterey, Rural Georgia, Alaska Native Tumor Registry, Greater
Trends in MCC incidence rate and reported cases
A total of 6600 cases of MCC were reported to SEER during 2000-2013 (the most recent year for which data were available at the time of extraction in February 2017). Age- and sex-adjusted incidence rates were calculated and normalized to the 2000 US standard population.
For all solid cancers, there was a significant decrease in the standardized incidence rate between 2000 (429 [95% CI 427.5-430.5] cases/100,000 person-years) and 2013 (379.8 [95% CI 378.6-381.1] cases/100,000 person-years). In
Discussion
MCC is an aggressive skin cancer that is associated with Merkel cell polyomavirus and sun exposure. The incidence of MCC has risen over the past several decades. Here we report ongoing increases in incidence, with the number of incident cases rising by >95% since the year 2000, which is well above the increase of incident cases of all solid tumors (15%) and even above that of the rapidly increasing cancer type melanoma (57%). We further project incident cases over the next 5 and 10 years, using
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Funding sources: Supported by NIH T32-CA009515, NIH K24-CA139052, NIH R01CA176841, Prostate Cancer Foundation Award #15CHAS04, UW MCC Patient Gift Fund, and the Bloom endowment at University of Washington.
Conflicts of interest: Dr Nghiem has received consulting fees from EMD Serono and Pfizer and research grant support from Bristol-Meyers Squibb. All other authors have no conflicts of interest.
Reprints not available from the authors.