Indoor tanning can cause skin cancer

They found that women who used tanning beds as teens and during their 20s have up to six times increased risk for the deadly skin cancer compared with their counterparts who did not tan indoors.

Studies made by researchers of the University of Minnesota have shown that regular use of indoor tanning can increase the risk to suffer melanoma. Younger women reported earlier and more frequent use of indoor tanning facilities as compared with patients whose melanoma diagnoses occurred later in life.

The researchers found that women were two to six times more likely to develop melanoma if they had tanned indoors, Lazovich told CBS News. The median age at indoor tanning initiation was 16 years for women younger than 40 years at diagnosis or reference age, compared with 25 years for women 40 years and older (P .001).

The medical examiners concluded that the risks of developing melanoma increase exponentially if the participant started to use this tanning technique from a younger age.

The study “highlights the need to address indoor tanning among young white women, among whom indoor tanning is most common”, wrote Gery P. Guy, Jr, PhD, MPH, of the division of cancer prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and coauthors, in an accompanying editorial. Hopefully, more regulations will start being implemented and young women will get discouraged to further use indoor tanning. Just two of the women diagnosed with melanoma younger than age 30 reported tanning outdoors, not indoors. Young adults who take to indoor tanning at a young age are now forming a larger group of patients with melanoma.

But since you can’t always go to the beach, especially in the winter, many women opt for the indoor tanning alternative to keep their skin pretty and tanned. In the cases and control group combined, substantially fewer men reported indoor tanning (44.3% versus 78.2%), which could explain much of the inconsistency, the authors noted.

Study authors imply that the “melanoma epidemic” can be curbed if states impose limitations to indoor tanning especially among young people. Critics say that tanning bed makers and indoor tanning venues often mislead consumers through “deceptive advertising” promising a healthy glow.

“Ongoing surveillance can be used to determine the impact of policies on reducing the use of indoor tanning and the incidence of melanoma”.

The results showed that 68.3 percent of the patients with melanoma in the study were women. The second group reported an average of 40 session. The study is published in JAMA Dermatology. It is this demographic which presents an increased risk of developing melanoma. With skin cancer rates skyrocketing and one person dying every 45 minutes from the disease, lawmakers and federal agencies need to protect children from the known risks associated with indoor tanning.

The findings support a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration proposal to ban indoor tanning before age 18, Lazovich said.