Tanning beds triple the risk of melanoma and, for the first time, these devices have been shown to cause melanoma-related DNA damage on almost the entire surface of the skin. The study is published in the journal “Science Advances”.
He … melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer. Artificial UV radiation is classified as carcinogenic by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the risk of melanoma increases considerably. Despite decades of warnings, the precise biological mechanism underlying the cancer risk associated with tanning beds remains unclear.
The indoor tanning industry has used this uncertainty to claim that tanning beds are no more harmful than sunlight.
This new study from a team at Northwestern Medicine University and the University of California, San Francisco, conclusively challenges these claims by showing how tanning beds, at the molecular level, mutate skin cells far beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight.
“Even on the normal skin of patients who tan indoors, in areas without moles, we found changes in DNA that are precursor mutations predisposing to melanoma,” explains Pedram Gerami, first author of the study. “This has never been shown before“.
Gerami, who also directs the dermatology melanoma program at Northwestern, has been treating melanoma patients for 20 years. Over the years, she treated an unusually high number of women under 50 with a history of multiple melanomas, and she suspected the correlating factor was the use of tanning beds.
It is for this reason that he designed the epidemiological part of the study and compared the medical records of approximately 3,000 deckchair users with 3,000 orders of the same age with no history of artificial tanning.
The team discovered that 5.1% of tanning bed users had been diagnosed with melanoma, compared to 2.1% of non-users. After adjusting for age, sex, sunburn history, and family history, tanning bed use remained associated with a 2.85-fold increase in melanoma risk.
Areas hidden from the sun
People who used sunbeds were also more likely to develop melanoma in areas of the body protected from the sun, such as lumbar area and glutes. These results support the idea that tanning beds may cause more serious DNA damage than sun exposure.
To test this hypothesis, they used new genomic technologies to perform single-cell DNA sequencing on melanocytes (the pigment-producing skin cells where melanoma begins) from three groups of skin donors.
The first group included 11 Gerami patients with a long history of indoor tanning. The second consisted of nine patients who had never used tanning beds, but were otherwise matched in terms of age, sex and cancer risk profile. A third group, consisting of six cadaveric donors, provided additional skin tissue to supplement the control samples.
Scientists have sequenced 182 individual melanocytes and discovered that skin cells from solarium users They had almost twice as many mutations as control subjects and were more likely to contain melanoma-associated mutations.
DNA damage
In people who used these devices, the mutations also appeared in areas of the body that usually remain protected from the sun, confirming that tanning beds generate a wider scope of DNA damage.
“When exposed to the sun outdoors, perhaps 20% of the skin suffers the most damage,” says Gerami. In people who use solar cabins, we observe these same dangerous mutations on almost the entire surface of the skin“.
Gerami points out that the need for policy change is obvious. “Artificial tanning should at least be illegal for minors,” he says.
He also believes tanning beds should carry warnings similar to those on cigarettes. “The WHO has considered that deckchairs have the same level of carcinogenicity as tobacco and asbestos. “It’s a class 1 carcinogen.”
In Spain, the use of artificial tanning devices is prohibited for minors under the age of 18 due to the increased risk of skin cancer and the cumulative effect of UV rays.
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