BOSTON — Researchers confirmed an association between tanning bed use and an increased risk for three common skin cancers — basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma, according to results presented at the 10th AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Cancer Prevention Research, held Oct. 22-25, 2011.

The popularity of indoor tanning is widespread, with roughly 10 percent of Americans using a tanning facility each year. However, use of tanning beds has been shown to be associated with an increased risk for skin cancer, according to lead researcher Mingfeng Zhang, M.D., research fellow in the department of dermatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

For this cohort study, Zhang and colleagues followed 73,494 nurses who participated in the Nurses’ Health Study II from 1989 to 2009. They tracked tanning bed use during high school and college and when women were aged between 25 and 35 years old. They also tracked the overall average usage during both periods in relation to basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma and melanoma.

Results showed that tanning bed use increased skin cancer risk with a dose-response effect. More tanning bed exposure led to higher risks. Compared with nonusers, the risk for basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma increased by 15 percent for every four visits made to a tanning booth per year; the risk for melanoma increased by 11 percent.

“The use during high school/college had a stronger effect on the increased risk for basal cell carcinoma compared with use during ages 25 to 35,” Zhang said.

“These results have a public health impact on skin cancer prevention for all three types of skin cancer,” she said. “[They] can be used to warn the public against future use of tanning beds and to promote restrictions on the indoor tanning industry by policymakers.”

In follow-up studies, the researchers plan to monitor skin cancer incidence and to assess the association with tanning bed usage in this cohort during a longer term.

Copyright Newswise 2011. All Rights Reserved.

DALLAS – Oct.  20, 2011 – A recent UT Southwestern Medical Center study found that estrogen regulates energy expenditure, appetite and body weight, while insufficient estrogen receptors in specific parts of the brain may lead to obesity. (more…)

As temperatures begin to cool, coughing and sneezing inevitably follow. So begins flu season in the United States — and preventable deaths, says David Kimberlin, M.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham professor of pediatrics and president-elect of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

“Each year, an average of 24,000 people in the United States start the flu season alive and by the end of it have been killed by it; that is enormous,” says Kimberlin, who co-directs the UAB Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases.

Kimberlin says it is too early to forecast the extent of this flu season, but he cautions people to protect themselves.

“Regardless how severe a flu season is predicted to be, people should be concerned every year. They should get their annual flu shot anytime the flu vaccine is available. If you haven’t yet done so, stop and get it,” Kimberlin says.

“The strains that are circulating in the 2011-12 season are the same strains circulating this past year,” Kimberlin says. “That’s the first time that has happened in a very long time.”

That means there is no shortage of the flu vaccine. “We have a good supply already, so we have the best opportunity to protect the U.S. population from this deadly disease,” Kimberlin explains.

One of the strains included in this year’s influenza vaccine is H1N1, a pandemic strain that infected about 61 million people in 2009, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the 2010-11 flu season, 115 children died of flu-related causes, according to the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report; less than a quarter of them had received the flu vaccine, and nearly half of them were age 5 and younger.