Cases of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, are rising among young women, according to a study by the National Institute of Cancer. Not the same thing can be said about melanoma cases among men, which appear to have slowed down recently.

For the study, Mark Purdue, a researcher at the National Cancer Institute” Division of Cancer Epidemiology & Genetics browsed through more than 20,000 cases of melanoma in young adults ages 15 to 39 from 1973 to 2004. The cases were registered by the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End result program, a database administered by the National Cancer Institute.

Between 1980 and 2004, Purdue and colleagues found a 50 percent increase in the annual incidence of melanoma among young women. This led the researchers to a simply conclusion. Although the researchers did not study the causes leading to this huge number of melanoma cases, they blamed a current trend circulating among young women, namely going to tanning salons or exposing too much to the sun’s damaging rays.

Moreover, the high number of cases clearly shows that national campaigns to educate Americans about the risks of indoor and outdoor tanning “do not appear to have resulted in a reduction in melanoma cases among young women,” Purdue said.

Things look better in the case of young men. More exactly, melanoma cases among them rose from 4.7 cases per 100,000 per year in 1973 to 7.7 100,000 per year in 1980, but it then stopped rising. The researchers couldn’t give a specific reason for this situation.

The study also found an increasing trend for thicker and later-stage melanomas, suggesting that the increase is not the result of better reporting of the disease.

The American Academy of Dermatology estimates that nearly 63,000 people will be diagnosed with melanoma in the U.S. this year, and about 8,400 will die from the disease. The main risk factor for developing melanoma is ultraviolet radiation.

The study was published in the July 10 edition of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.