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Skin cancer is declining among younger adults in Sweden for the first time after decades of increases, making it the first European country to see a fall, researchers said on Monday. The risk of skin cancer is decreasing for people under 50, said Hildur Helgadottir, associate professor of oncology at the Karolinska Institute and lead author of a study published in the JAMA Dermatology medical journal. The decline was most likely due in part to heightened awareness about sun protection and a drop in access to sunbeds, she said.
Helgadottir said there was a "very clear and significant trend break around 2015". "For 30-year-olds before 2015, there was an increase of on average five per cent per year. But since 2015, it has decreased by on average five per cent per year," she said.
For those aged 50 and older, "it rises by at least five per cent per year and the increase rises steeply with age". While the researchers did not analyse the causes of the decline in skin cancer cases, several main factors were believed to have played a role. In addition to increased awareness of the importance of sun protection, another factor was the introduction in Sweden of a 2018 ban on under-18s using sunbeds and a decline in public access to sunbeds that started years earlier.
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