Objective: Two recent studies indicated that cooks may have an increased risk of uveal melanoma. Here we report findings of two German case-control studies regarding cooking and uveal melanoma risk.
Methods: We conducted a hospital and population-based case-control study of uveal melanoma and occupational exposures. We then pooled these results. Overall, 118 cases and 475 controls matching on age, sex and study regions were interviewed. We classified subjects as exposed to an occupational category (i.e. cooks) if they had ever worked within this category for at least six months or more. Subjects who had worked as cooks were rated as either (a) having prepared food without having cooked and therefore unexposed to cooking or (b) having cooked. We used conditional logistic regression models to calculate pooled odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI).
Results: Subjects who had ever cooked had an OR of 6.1 (95% CI: 1.7-22.2). Cooking was associated with an OR of 4.0 (95% CI: 0.8-20.1) for a job duration of 0.5-2 years and with an OR of 11.4 (95% CI: 1.6-81.9) for a job duration more than 2 years.
Conclusions: In light of the similar finding in other studies, the association deserves further attention.