Association between blood lead and melanoma: using data from NHANES 2017 to 2023: A cross-sectional study

Melanoma ranks as the 4th most common cause of cancer-related mortality globally. To standardize and lower the disease's incidence, it is critical to continuously investigate and report melanoma risk factors. Lead has been associated with the development of several cancers. Nevertheless, it is still unknown how blood lead levels and the onset of melanoma are related. The purpose of this study was to find out if blood lead and melanoma in US adults were associated. Using information obtained from the 2017 to 2023 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, smooth curve fitting and multivariable logistic regression models were used to investigate the association between blood lead and melanoma. The study employed subgroup analysis and interaction testing to examine the stability of this association across populations. Receiver operating characteristic curves were used to evaluate how well blood lead levels and variables predicted the risk of melanoma. In this cross-sectional study, after controlling for all variables, we found a potential association between blood lead levels and melanoma in a study involving 123 melanoma patients. And the risk of developing melanoma increased by 31% for each 1-unit increase in blood lead (1.31 [1.09, 1.56]). The receiver operating characteristic curves showed that model 3's area under the curve value was 0.618, indicating that the variables may be effective in jointly predicting melanoma prevalence with blood lead levels. According to our research, blood lead exposure is possibly correlated with melanoma in adult US citizens. Further prospective research is required to support the findings of this study.