Researchers have discovered that indoor tanning may accelerate genetic aging in the skin, leaving young users with more cancer-linked mutations than people decades older.
People who use tanning beds have long been known to face a greater risk of skin cancer. New research now shows that young adults who tan indoors experience genetic changes in their skin that may cause their cells to accumulate more mutations than those found in people who are twice as old.
“We found that tanning bed users in their 30s and 40s had even more mutations than people in the general population who were in their 70s and 80s,” said Bishal Tandukar, PhD, a UCSF postdoctoral scholar in Dermatology who is the co-first author of the study. “In other words, the skin of tanning bed users appeared decades older at the genetic level.”
Skin Cancer and Rising Melanoma Rates
These types of genetic changes can increase the risk of skin cancer, which the American Cancer Society identifies as the most common cancer in the U.S. One form, melanoma, represents only about 1% of all skin cancer cases but is responsible for the majority of deaths. Each year, roughly 11,000 Americans die from melanoma, with ultraviolet radiation being the primary cause.
