People who have been diagnosed with nonmelanoma skin cancer at a young age have a higher risk of developing melanoma and 29 other cancer types, according to a recent study HealthDay reported.

Researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia and the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom found that nonmelanoma skin cancer survivors were 1.36 times more likely to develop other types of cancer - and the younger the patient, the greater the risk.

The risk was 23 times higher for those younger than 25 and 3.5 times higher for those aged 25 to 44, HealthDay reported. For older people aged 45 to 59, the risk of developing another cancer was 1.74 times higher. It was 1.32 times higher for those older than 60, the study found.

"Our study shows that [nonmelanoma skin cancer] susceptibility is an important indicator of susceptibility to malignant tumors and that the risk is especially high among people who develop NMSC at a young age," Rodney Sinclair, director of dermatology at the Epworth Hospital and professor of medicine at the University of Melbourne, said in a statement. "The risk increases for a large group of seemingly unrelated cancers; however, the greatest risk relates to other cancers induced by sunlight, such as melanoma."

For the study, researchers analyzed hospital admissions and death records from an all-England data set collected between 1999 and 2011, and   constructed two groups, The Plain Dealer reported. One group was made up of more than 500,000 people with a history of nonmelanoma skin cancer, and the control group included nearly 8.8 million people who had never had nonmelanoma. Both groups were predominately Caucasian.

Researchers tracked study participants for five to six years from the time of their admission.

"The risk increases for a large group of seemingly unrelated cancers; however, the greatest risk relates to other cancers induced by sunlight, such as melanoma," Sinclair said.

Sinclair added that the findings show that young people who have had nonmelanoma skin cancer at an early age have a greatly increased risk of cancer and could benefit from cancer screenings, Sinclair said.