ALB and dermatomyositis: Previously identified risk factors for malignancy include older age, male gender, elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate, reduced albumin (ALB) level, presence of dysphagia, cutaneous vasculitis, Gottron's sign, heliotrope rash, and rapid-onset myositis.[5,9,12] Unlike most research designs, in which the total DM cohort was the final studied patients, we made the malignant patients as basis for randomly selecting nonmalignant patients according to age and gender in a ratio of 1:2.