"Tanning bed use is tied to almost a threefold increase in melanoma risk, and for the first time, scientists have shown how these devices cause melanoma-linked DNA damage across nearly the entire skin surface, reports a new study published in Science Advances and led by Northwestern Medicine and University of California, San Francisco. Melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer, kills about 11,000 in the U.S. each year. Despite decades of warnings, the precise biological mechanism behind tanning beds' cancer risk remained unclear."
"This new study "irrefutably" challenges those claims by showing how tanning beds, at a molecular level, mutate skin cells far beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight, according to the authors. "Even in normal skin from indoor tanning patients, areas where there are no moles, we found DNA changes that are precursor mutations that predispose to melanoma," said study first author Pedram Gerami, MD, the IDP Foundation Professor of Skin Cancer Research in the Department of Dermatology. "That has never been shown before.""
Tanning bed use is tied to almost a threefold increase in melanoma risk. Tanning beds cause melanoma-linked DNA damage across nearly the entire skin surface, producing molecular-level mutations that extend beyond the reach of ordinary sunlight. Melanoma kills about 11,000 people in the U.S. annually. Indoor tanning operators have argued that tanning beds are no more harmful than sunlight, but tanning beds mutate skin cells in ways that create precursor DNA changes. Even skin areas without moles in indoor tanning patients contained precursor mutations that predispose to melanoma. An epidemiologic comparison showed melanoma diagnosed in 5.1% of tanning bed users versus 2.1% of non-users.
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