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Customer question:

Can itchy skin be a symptom of cancer? Anonymous customer's question

Pharmacist's answer:

Itching or pruritus can be a symptom or even the first sign of some types of cancer, including blood cancer, skin cancer, liver cancer, gallbladder cancer, and bile duct cancer. Certainly, other causes of itching are much more common.

There are several ways that cancer can cause itching. The body contains nerve endings that cause the sensation of itching, similar to pain receptors that cause the sensation of pain. In general, anything that irritates these nerve endings can cause itching.

Itching can occur due to direct irritation of the skin, such as skin cancer or cancer that has spread or metastasized to the skin. Sometimes the itching is caused by the accumulation of bile salts under the skin, for example in blood cancer or bile duct cancer, or by substances released from the tumor - i.e. in response to the tumor.

Most often, however, itching is caused by something other than cancer. It is not known exactly how often pruritus occurs as a symptom or the first symptom of cancer, but it is estimated that an underlying systemic or whole-body disease such as liver disease, kidney disease, blood disease or cancer is present in 10 to 50% of people. in which itching occurs all over the body.

Itching can also be a result of cancer treatment. There are cancer treatments associated with long-term itching, including:

• chemotherapy
• radiotherapy
• bortezomib
• brentuximab vedotin
• ibrutinib
• interferonin
• interleukin-2
• rituximab

Itching can also be caused by hormone therapy for breast cancer, such as with:

• anastrozole
• exemestane
• fulvestrant
• letrozole
• raloxifene
• toremifene
• tamoxifen

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