Non-melanoma Skin Cancer in Kidney Transplant Recipients: Apparent Geographical Differences : Letter to editor

Non-melanoma Skin Cancer (NMSC) is consider asthe most common post-transplant malignancies inwestern countries (1); however, kaposi’s sarcoma isthe most frequent cancer after kidney transplantationin Middel East countries (3, 4). In the study ofEinollahi et al, which is performed on 11255 kidneytransplant recipients, Kaposi’s sarcoma was the mostcommon tumor type (2). It would also dishearteningto know the incidence rate of Kaposi’s sarcomaamong kidney transplant recipients shows anascending trend in the Middle East countries (3, 5). Inaddition, they reported that the incidence of postkidney transplant malignancies was lower thanwestern countries and the skin cancer was occurred in1.14% of all patients (2), it may partely due togeographical differences.In the study of Bernat et al (1), 305 patientsunderwent kidney transplantation and 73 (25.2%) ofthem developed NMSC, of which the most frequenttumor were basal cell carcinoma (BCC). Most studiesconducted in Europian countries showed that themost common skin cancers after kidneytransplantation was BCC like the report of Bernat andcolleagues (6, 10). In contrast, studies in the EasternMediterranean area in Asia, the incidence of BCCand SCC of were in the next position after Kaposi ssarcoma and Non- Hodgkin lymphoma (7, 8) .In addition, Bernatet et al. (1) showed that age at timeof transplant, low phototype and high pretransplantationoccupational sun exposure were riskfactors for NMSC after kidney transplantation.Einollahi et al, reported that (2), the male sex,increased age, prolonged immunosuppression andazathioprine increased the risk of skin tumors afterrenal transplantation.As we see in literature, it is seems that the incidenceof malignancies and its types varies betweenMediterranean Region countries and middle east asiapopulation (4). Number of multicenter studies