A new study led by researchers at UC San Francisco and Northwestern University has found that young people who use tanning beds show more genetic mutations in their skin cells than individuals twice their age. The findings, published on December 12 in Science Advances, indicate that artificial ultraviolet (UV) radiation from tanning beds causes cellular changes that may lead to skin cancer, including melanoma.
Bishal Tandukar, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in Dermatology at UCSF and co-first author of the study, said, “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. In other words, the skin of tanning bed users appeared decades older at the genetic level.”
Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the United States. Melanoma accounts for about 1% of all skin cancers but is responsible for most deaths related to this disease. Each year, approximately 11,000 Americans die from melanoma, mainly due to exposure to UV radiation.
UV radiation comes from sunlight as well as artificial sources like tanning beds. The popularity of indoor tanning has been linked to increased rates of melanoma, especially among young women who are frequent users of tanning salons. Despite bans on tanning beds in several countries and classification by the World Health Organization as a group 1 carcinogen—alongside tobacco smoke and asbestos—tanning beds remain legal and widely used in the U.S.
The research team analyzed medical records from over 32,000 dermatology patients regarding their use of tanning beds, history of sunburns, and family history of melanoma. They also collected skin samples from 26 donors and sequenced a total of 182 cells.
The results showed that younger individuals who used tanning beds had more mutations than much older people who did not use them. These mutations were particularly concentrated on areas like the lower back—parts typically not exposed to natural sunlight but frequently exposed during indoor tanning sessions.
Senior author A. Hunter Shain, PhD, associate professor at UCSF’s Department of Dermatology said: “The skin of tanning bed users was riddled with the seeds of cancer — cells with mutations known to lead to melanoma.”
Shain added: “We cannot reverse a mutation once it occurs, so it is essential to limit how many mutations accumulate in the first place. One of the simplest ways to do that is to avoid exposure to artificial UV radiation.”
Other contributors from UCSF included Delahny Deivendran; Limin Chen, PhD; Jessica Tang, PhD; Tuyet Tan; Harsh Sharma, PhD; Aravind K. Bandari, PhD; Noel Cruz-Pacheco, MS; Darwin Chang; Annika L. Marty, MS; Adam Olshen, PhD; Natalia Faraj Murad, PhD; and Iwei Yeh, MD, PhD. Co-first author Pedram Gerami, MD is affiliated with Northwestern University.
The study received funding from several organizations including the National Cancer Institute (R01 CA265786), National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (AR080626), Department of Defense Melanoma Research Program (ME210014), and Melanoma Research Alliance.
No conflicts of interest were reported by the authors.
