PROVIDENCE – A Brown University professor and dermatologist at the Providence Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center has received a $10 million grant from the Veterans Affairs Cooperative Studies Program to see whether an easily available skin cream can prevent skin cancer.
Dr. Martin Weinstock, who teaches dermatology and community health at Brown’s Warren Alpert Medical School, will conduct a four-year trial focusing on basal-cell and squamous-cell carcinomas, which unlike melanomas are usually not fatal but can be dangerous or disfiguring.
Weinstock will study the impact of applying 5-Fluourouracil cream to the face and ears of patients who have had at least two carcinomas in the last five years, aiming to reduce the incidence of future cancers. The cream is already used to treat actinic keratoses, rough pink spots of skin that may turn into skin cancer.
A trial group of 1,000 patients will be recruited from 12 V.A. clinical centers around the United States, and monitored for two to four years.
Skin cancer accounts for more than half the cancer cases in the United States, Weinstock said: more than 1 million cases per year, including 100,000 annually in the V.A. health care system. •
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