196 Associations between dietary and supplemental vitamin A and skin cancer risk in postmenopausal women

Abstract

Nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and cutaneous melanoma (CM) are among the most common cancers in older women. While studies on the protective effects of vitamin A against NMSC have been mixed, a 2012 cohort study which included 36,096 women showed that supplementation with retinol—a form of vitamin A—correlated with reduced CM risk in women. To investigate associations of vitamin A and skin cancer in postmenopausal women, we used data from the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) observational study of 93,676 postmenopausal women.