PREVALENCE AND RISK FACTORS OF COMMON NAEVI IN THE GENERAL POPULATION: RESULTS OF THE KORA SURVEY 2000.

Malignant melanoma (MM) is currently the fastest increasing malignancy and constitutes a major public health burden. The number of common naevi (CN) is known to be related to the MM risk and may serve as a marker in epidemiological studies. For the KORA, Cooperative Health Research in the region of Augsburg, Germany, Survey 2000, a random sample stratified by age and gender of the adult population of the city of Augsburg was drawn. CN are frequent in the adult general population and their number depends on demographic, body metric, and genetic factors as well as parameters of an individual ultraviolet exposure.