Sunscreen Use in Childhood May Prevent Melanoma in Adulthood: How to Avoid Skin Cancer

When you put on sunscreen, you should apply it early and often. Now, it turns out that using it early may be more effective than you thought. A new study reveals that using sunscreen during childhood prevents melanoma in adults.

Despite increased sunscreen use in recent decades, the incidence of malignant melanoma has actually increased dramatically. In fact, it's estimated that more than 75,000 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the U.S. this year.

"While sunscreen is highly effective in preventing sunburn, this paradox has led some to question whether sunscreen is effective in preventing melanoma caused by ultraviolet (UV) light," said John VandeBerg, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It has been suggested that sunscreen enables people to receive more UV exposure without becoming sunburned, and that increased exposure to UV light has led to an increasing incidence of melanoma."

That's why researchers decided to take a closer look. Using an opossum model, the researchers applied lotion containing sunscreen to infant animals. In the end, they found that opossums with sunscreen had a 10-fold reduction in pre-melanotic lesions, which are known to progress to melanoma. This seemed to show that applying sunscreen in childhood is important for decreasing the risk of melanoma later in life.

"Based on these results, we speculate that the reason it is particularly important that sunscreens be used consistently in childhood, and especially in infancy, is because skin cells during growth are dividing much more rapidly than in adulthood, and it is during cell division that the cells are most susceptible to UV-induced damage," said VandeBerg in a news release. "Evidence that supports this hypothesis is that melanoma is not induced in adult opossums when their shaved skin is irradiated by UV light in the absence of sunscreen."

The findings were published in the journal Pigment Cell and Melanoma.