This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Exposure to indoor tanning common among adults, college students

More than 35% of adults in Western countries and 55% of US college students have been exposed to indoor tanning, according to recent study results.

Researcher Eleni Linos, MD, DrPH, assistant professor of dermatology at the University of California, San Francisco, and colleagues conducted a systematic search through March 16, 2013, of PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases. Reference lists and publicly available data also were searched, along with records reporting a prevalence of indoor tanning. Investigators collected 1,976 records, of which 161 were eligible in full text and 88 gained study inclusion.

 

Eleni Linos

Population proportional attributable risk was calculated for indoor tanning in the United States, Europe and Australia for nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and melanoma. Results included data from 406,696 participants, and the analyses of students were based on US data.

Adults had a summary prevalence of ever exposure to indoor tanning of 35.7% (95% CI, 27.5%-44%), compared with 55% (95% CI, 33%-77.1%) for college students and 19.3% (95% CI, 14.7%-24%) for adolescents. Previous-year exposure prevalence for adults was 14% (95% CI, 11.5%-16.5%), while college students and adolescents were 43.1% (95% CI, 21.7-64.5%) and 18.3% (95% CI, 12.6%-24%), respectively.

The population proportional attributable risk for NMSC was 3% to 21.8%, and for melanoma it was 2.6% to 9.4%. The researchers estimated that indoor tanning was attributable to 452,796 NMSC and 11,374 melanoma cases annually across all regions.

“To our knowledge, this is the first summary of international prevalence of indoor tanning exposures,” the researchers concluded. “Our estimate of more than 450,000 new cases of skin cancer attributable to indoor tanning each year in the regions examined is alarming. To put this number into context, we show that the number of skin cancer cases due to indoor tanning is higher than the number of lung cancer cases due to smoking in the same regions.”

Disclosure: Researcher Mary-Margaret Chren, MD, serves as a consultant for Genentech.