Organ Transplant Drug May Up Skin Cancer Risk

Scientists may have found a clue about why skin cancer rates are high for organ transplant patients.

In lab tests of cultured cells, they found that a drug used by transplant recipients called azathioprine made cells more sensitive to UVA light. The researchers did not perform their tests on humans.

However, studies have found that a type of skin cancer called squamous cell carcinoma is 50 to 250 times more common among transplant patients. "Twenty years after transplant, between 60% and 90% of patients are affected," write Peter Karran, PhD, and colleagues in Science.

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