Wed, 11 Oct 2006 20:43:41 EDT
Got the red hair gene? Stay out of the sun
Even red-heads with medium pigmentation face increased skin cancer risk
NEW YORK - Genes involved in skin pigmentation have an effect on a person’s skin cancer risk beyond their influence on a person’s hair or skin color, a new study shows.
Women who carried one so-called "red hair color" gene but had medium or olive skin, as opposed to fair skin, actually had the highest skin cancer risk among a group of Caucasian women, Dr. Jiali Han of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues found.
Han and colleagues studied variants of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene, which influences how the pigment melanin is processed in the skin and helps determine skin color. The MC1R gene is highly variable among light-skinned populations.
The researchers looked at three variations of the gene strongly linked to red hair, fair skin, and resistance to tanning, which are known as red hair color (RHC) variants, as well as four variants less strongly linked to red hair, termed non-red hair color (NRHC) variants, in a subgroup of women participating in the Nurse’s Health Study.
Their analysis included 219 melanoma patients, 286 women with squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), 300 with basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and 873 skin-cancer-free controls.
