Dai W, et al. - In this comprehensive evaluation, researchers assessed cutaneous melanoma disease-specific survival (CMSS) in relation to 14,522 common single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 149 genes of the fatty-acid synthesis pathway. The discovery dataset comprised data from 858 cutaneous melanoma (CM) patients from a published genome-wide association study (GWAS) by The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Using dataset of 409 CM patients from another GWAS from the Nurses' Health and Health Professionals Follow-up Studies, they validated significant SNPs. In both discovery and validation datasets, 40 noteworthy SNPs related to CMSS were identified. CMSS was predicted by two independent SNPs of ELOVL2 rs3734398 T>C and HSD17B12 rs11037684 A>G, with an allelic hazards ratio of 0.66 and 2.29, respectively. A significantly increased mRNA expression level was observed in association with the ELOVL2 rs3734398 variant CC genotype. These SNPs could be potential markers for CM prognosis.