Tanning Beds Are Mutating Your DNA and Tripling the Risk of Deadly Skin Cancer
As temperatures begin to drop in many parts of the country, some people may find themselves turning to tanning beds to keep up that summer glow. Although tanning bed companies have claimed that they aren’t any more dangerous than sitting under the sun, a new study “irrefutably” challenges those claims.
Published in Science Advances, the study shows that people who use tanning beds have triple the risk of melanoma than those who don’t. More alarmingly, for the first time, scientists found that tanning beds cause widespread DNA damage, with mutations appearing even in places where the sun never shines.
“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. That has never been shown before,” said first author Pedram Gerami in a press release.
Read More: How Many Ways Can the Sun Kill Us?
Linking Tanning Beds to Melanoma
Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and around 11,000 Americans die from it every year. While treating patients with multiple cases of melanoma, Gerami noticed an unusually high number of patients were women under the age of 50. Since young women are one of the largest demographics who use tanning beds, he suspected that tanning beds may have something to do with their melanoma cases and wanted to investigate further.
To begin the study, researchers compared medical records of 6,000 people, half of whom used tanning beds and half of whom did not. For those who used tanning beds, 5.1 percent had been diagnosed with melanoma, compared to only 2.1 percent of those who never used tanning beds. This equals to tanning bed users being about three times more likely to develop melanoma.
Another surprising result was that tanning bed users were developing melanoma on areas of the body that normally are not exposed to the sun, like the lower back and buttocks. These findings piqued the research team’s interest in looking closer at whether or not tanning beds were causing more widespread DNA damage than the sun.
How Tanning Beds Damage DNA
To find out whether tanning beds caused extensive DNA damage, scientists used new genomic technologies and performed single-cell DNA sequencing on melanocytes — the cells where melanin forms that can be transformed into melanoma.
After sequencing 182 individual melanocytes from three different skin donor groups, their hypothesis was confirmed. Skin cells from people who used tanning beds had nearly twice as many mutations as the control group, and their mutations were more likely to be melanoma-related.
These mutations also corresponded to the pattern seen in the medical record comparison, with tanning bed users having DNA mutations in areas of the body that are usually protected from the sun. This finding confirms that tanning beds cause more extensive DNA damage and injury than the sun.
“In outdoor sun exposure, maybe 20 percent of your skin gets the most damage. In tanning bed users, we saw those same dangerous mutations across almost the entire skin surface,” explained Gerami.
A Warning Against Tanning Beds
The research team hopes their study will deter people from using tanning beds and encourage policy change, especially where children are concerned.
“At the very least, indoor tanning should be illegal for minors,” suggested Gerami. “Most of my patients started tanning when they were young, vulnerable, and didn’t have the same level of knowledge and education they have as adults. They feel wronged by the industry and regret the mistakes of their youth.”
Did you use tanning beds during your younger years? Gerami recommends visiting a dermatologist for a total-body skin exam to make sure you aren’t at risk for melanoma.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
Read More: Olive Oil Can Benefit Your Skin, Just Not as a Natural Sunscreen
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article: