Tanning bed users are known to have a higher risk of skin cancer, but for the first time researchers have found that young indoor tanners undergo genetic changes that can lead to\u00a0more mutations in their skin cells than people twice their age.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The study, which was led by UC San Francisco and Northwestern University, appears Dec. 12 in\u00a0Science Advances.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We found that tanning bed users in their 30s\u00a0and 40s\u00a0had even more mutations than people in the general population who were in their 70s and 80s,” said\u00a0Bishal Tandukar, PhD, a UCSF postdoctoral scholar\u00a0in Dermatology\u00a0who is the co-first author of the study. “In other words, the skin of tanning bed users appeared decades older at the genetic level.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such mutations can lead to skin cancer, which is the most common cancer in the U.S., according to the\u00a0American Cancer Society. Among those skin cancers is melanoma<\/a>, which accounts for only about 1% of skin cancers but causes most of the deaths. About 11,000 Americans die annually from melanoma, primarily from exposure to ultraviolet radiation.\u00a0<\/p>\n UV radiation occurs naturally in sunlight,\u00a0as well as\u00a0in\u00a0artificial\u00a0light\u00a0sources\u00a0like\u00a0tanning beds.\u00a0Rates\u00a0of melanoma have\u00a0risen along\u00a0with\u00a0the use of\u00a0tanning beds\u00a0in recent years, disproportionately affecting young women,\u00a0who are\u00a0the main clients of the tanning industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n Numerous countries\u00a0effectively ban tanning beds,\u00a0and the World Health Organization classifies them as a group 1 carcinogen, the same category as tobacco smoke and asbestos,\u00a0but\u00a0tanning beds\u00a0remain\u00a0legal and popular\u00a0in the U.S.\u00a0<\/p>\n In their study,\u00a0the authors looked at the medical records of more than 32,000 dermatology\u00a0patients\u00a0including their tanning bed usage, history of sunburn, and family history of melanoma. They also obtained skin samples from\u00a026 donors and sequenced 182 cells.\u00a0<\/p>\n The\u00a0young tanning bed users\u00a0had more\u00a0skin mutations than people twice their age, especially in their lower backs, an area\u00a0that\u00a0does not\u00a0get\u00a0much\u00a0damage from sunlight but\u00a0has a great deal of\u00a0exposure\u00a0from\u00a0tanning beds.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The skin of tanning bed users was\u00a0riddled\u00a0with the seeds of cancer – cells with mutations known to lead to melanoma,” said senior author\u00a0A. Hunter Shain,\u00a0PhD, associate professor in the UCSF\u00a0Department of Dermatology.\u00a0<\/p>\n