Researchers are at a loss to explain why two towns in the US are experience unusually in high spirits levels of a rare type of cancer called ocular melanoma ( OM ) .
Just five in 1 million people are diagnosed with this type of eye malignant neoplastic disease every year . But for some reason , fair sex in Huntersville , North Carolina and Auburn , Alabama are experiencing an abnormally high number of cases .
In Huntersville , a town of just 55,000 , 18 citizenry have been diagnose with OM since 2000 . In Auburn , a town of 63,000 , 33 people who lived or worked in the town between 1980 and the former 1990s have been diagnose , according toHeathline .
“ When you ’re talking about more common cancers like breast cancer or lung genus Cancer , they ’re certainly more common , but when you ’re talking about a rarefied Crab , it sure as shooting call down a red iris , ” Dr Marlana Orloff from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia severalize the website .
OM is a eccentric of eye malignant neoplastic disease that get incells of the eyethat produce pigment . It ’s more common in women than men , with symptom including flashes of light in your vision , a bulging oculus , and pain around the eye arena .
Itcan be detectedby having an eye interrogation or an ultrasonography scan of your middle , although the exact causes of this rare Crab are nameless . It can be treated by inserting tiny radioactive home plate into the eye to kill the cancerous cells , among other discourse . In utmost cases , the heart will need to be take out .
concord to an clause in theCharlotte Observerlast twelvemonth , environmental exposure and genetic traits have been put forward as possible explanation for the example . A hike in awareness of the condition has allowed more grammatical case to be diagnosed .
WLTZsaid that Alabama has the highest rates of OM in the US . Researchers are depend into the possibility that there may be a genetic cause of the disease , which would facilitate explain why these two emplacement have such high rates .
In Huntersville , $ 100,000 has been allocate to research worker to look into possible causes of OM . That same amount of funding was denied to a state senator in Alabama , but thanks to aFacebook groupset up before this twelvemonth , more hoi polloi are becoming aware of the condition .
For now , it ’s somewhat of a mystery . If you think you may have some of the symptom of optic malignant melanoma , make indisputable you talk to your doctor .
