A research paper published in the British Journal of Dermatology, one of the ways being used by doctors to find out patient’s risk for skin cancer is count of moles on the body and especially on the right arm. As per the researchers, having more than 11 moles on right arm in particular means that a person is at increased risk of suffering from skin cancer.

In the study, the researchers have used data from a UK study in which 3,594 female twins were tracked from January 1995 to December 2003. As a part of the research, the twins have received skin examinations in which nurses gathered information on skin type, eye color, freckles, mole count on 17 body parts.

The researchers also took information from a bigger sample of men and women who took part in a UK melanoma case control study. It has been found that people having more than 11 moles on their right arm were having increased chances of having more than 100 moles on their entire body, which means that they are at higher risk of developing melanoma.

Study’s lead author Simone Ribero, of the college's Department of Twin Research & Genetic Epidemiology said, “This study follows on from previous work to identify the best proxy site for measuring the number of moles on the body as a whole. The difference here is that it has been done on a much larger scale in a healthy Caucasian population”.