LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Melanoma: Cancers
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Melanoma is one of the few cancers that has shown regression without treatment. Spontaneous partial regression can be common, but complete and permanent regression is rare, with only 33 cases being documented in the world's literature. It has been suggested that spontaneous regressions occur because the patient’s immune system rejects the cancer. This observation has caused physicians to try treatments with interferons, interleukins, vaccines and other treatments that stimulate the immune system to react against the malignant melanoma.
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Melanoma is a type of skin cancer. It begins in certain cells in the skin called melanocytes. To understand melanoma, it is helpful to know about the skin and about melanocytes--what they do, how they grow, and what happens when they become cancerous.
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Melanoma often hits people at a younger age than do other common types of cancers, affecting people in their 30s and 40s. More productive life years are lost to melanoma than to any cancers after pediatric and testicular cancers, Kirkwood said. And it's beginning to affect people who are even younger.
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Melanoma accounts for about 3% of skin cancer cases and a large majority of skin cancer deaths. Melanoma is the sixth most common cancer among both men and women. Sometimes, melanoma is found in children and adolescents. Melanoma rates are more than 10 times higher in white people than black people.
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Melanoma can ... be caused by other factors, including a family history of melanoma and the presence of abnormal, or atypical, moles. Although atypical moles are not cancerous, their presence is a sign of an inherited tendency to develop melanoma.
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Melanoma is much more likely to become malignant and spread to other parts of the body. Nearly 10,000 people died from skin cancer in 2004, and most of those died from melanoma, according to the CDC.
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