Do red tattoos make sunburns turn into skin cancer faster?
Red tattoos, ultraviolet radiation and skin cancer in mice
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists gave mice sunburns and tattooed some with red ink. The ink didn't cause cancer by itself, but when mice got sunburns, the tattooed ones got their third skin tumor a bit sooner and the tumors grew a little faster.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
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Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a healthcare professional. Terms
Scientists gave mice sunburns and tattooed some with red ink. The ink didn't cause cancer by itself, but when mice got sunburns, the tattooed ones got their third skin tumor a bit sooner and the tumors grew a little faster.
No biological mechanisms were identified in this study. This may be an epidemiological, observational, or survey-based study that reports associations rather than proposing causal biological pathways.
Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses
Max 100Randomized Controlled Trials
Max 90Cohort Studies
Max 72Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional Studies
Max 44Case Reports & Case Series
Max 30Expert Opinion & Narrative Reviews
Max 514 / 90
Evidence Score
Participants are randomly assigned to treatment or control groups, minimizing bias. Considered the gold standard for testing whether an intervention causes an effect.
Publication
Authors
Lerche CM, Heerfordt IM, Serup J, Poulsen T, Wulf HC
Related Content
Claims (6)
Chronic ultraviolet radiation exposure is the primary etiological factor in the development of non-melanoma skin cancers, specifically basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma, which frequently occur on sun-exposed facial regions and can result in significant structural disfigurement upon surgical excision.
In mice that got sunburns from UV light, those with red tattoos got their third skin tumor a bit sooner and the tumors grew a little faster than in mice without tattoos.
Red tattoos alone, without sun exposure, didn’t cause any skin tumors in mice.
When tumors did appear in sun-exposed mice with red tattoos, they grew faster than tumors in mice without tattoos.
The red ink used in the study contains a chemical (2-anisidine) that’s not allowed in human tattoos because it might cause cancer.