Q. If I tweeze out the single hair that grows from a facial mole, will it cause cancer, as my friend insists?
A. “No,” said Dr. Mark D. Kaufmann, a dermatologist in Manhattan. “Even by cutting, you don’t change the behavior of a mole.”
Any mole can become cancerous, said Dr. Kaufmann, who is associate clinical professor in the department of dermatology at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, but one with a hair sprouting from it is actually less likely to do so.
Such a mole is almost certainly what is called a congenital nevus, he said, and the hair indicates that the growth is way down in the skin, probably something that the person was born with.
Any mole that appears somewhere on the body where there was no mole before, or changes its appearance, should be checked by a dermatologist to make sure it is not in fact cancerous.
For melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, important warning signs are often abbreviated as A, B, C and D: A for asymmetry, with one half of the mole different from the other half; B for border irregularity; C for uneven color; and D for diameter, a size greater than six millimeters (slightly less than a quarter of an inch) across.
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