Approved Research

Investigating novel factors among lifestyle and medical information that correlates to sun tanning and sunburnt for skin type classification.

Lay summary

Skin cancer is one of the most common cancers worldwide, and the risk of developing skin cancer is increased by tanning and sunburnt after sun exposure. The degree of tanning and sunburnt differs between people, which can be classified as various skin types. Previous research has shown that skin type correlates to appearance, such as skin, hair, and eye color. Those factors are mainly determined by melanin, which meanwhile influences the reaction of the skin to the sun. However, the difference in appearance does not seem to be the only indicator of skin type, as the degree of tanning and sunburnt is still distinct from person to person with similar characteristics of appearance. Therefore, to classify the skin types, it is required to search for other general indicators besides appearance.

Previous research has revealed that several factors make effects on melanin production and skin pigmentation, but the correlation to skin types is rarely studied. For example, the diet of intaking specific compounds affects melanin production, playing important roles in melanogenesis. Likely, hormone level, which fluctuates according to lifestyle and medication, is reported to have impacts on pigmentation. Otherwise, skin disorders, such as melasma and vitiligo, have been revealed to link to skin pigmentation. Nonetheless, whether lifestyle and pigmentation disorders show an association with skin type or not is still unclear.

To clarify the above questions, this proposal aims to investigate novel factors correlating to skin type by analyzing easily obtainable data from daily life. Integrating the data from UK Biobank, we propose to comprehensively study the association between skin type and lifestyle during the 3-year period. Besides, medical conditions involving skin disorder diagnosis and biomarkers including hormones in blood and urine examination are incorporated. Meanwhile, appearance is also included for comparison and serves as a control. In addition, genetic data, such as RPS, SNPs and exome, is incorporated for further interpretation and investigation of mechanisms.

From this research, novel factors that could indicate skin type might be revealed. As the indicators would be accessible from daily life, they would be simple to understand and obtainable in a general way by the public, making public easier to identify their skin type. Most importantly, this might further suggest the risk factors correlated to skin cancers. Through identifying, the factors could be turned into protective factors and contribute to decreasing the risk of developing skin cancers.