Sunscreens and Immunosuppression

Microbial sunscreens

Basking in the sun on an Australian beach, I began to feel a burning sensation from excessive UV irradiation and decided not to wait for the ozone layer to return. As first aid I scraped some algae and cyanobacteria from the blistering rocks and smeared them on my exposed skin. Why? Because these organisms contain sunscreen compounds to protect themselves from harmful doses of UV-B (280–315 nm)...

Sunscreens - which and what for?

It is well established that sun exposure is the main cause for the development of skin cancer. Chronic continuous UV radiation is believed to induce malignant melanoma, whereas intermittent high-dose UV exposure contributes to the occurrence of actinic keratosis as precursor lesions of squamous cell carcinoma as well as basal cell carcinoma. Not only photocarcinogenesis but also the mechanisms ...

Genomics update Microbial sunscreens

Sunscreens and melanoma: the future looks bright.

BACKGROUND Meta-analyses of observational case-control studies have demonstrated no association between sunscreen use and the development of malignant melanoma. OBJECTIVES To examine whether this observation is to be expected given the period during which the case-control studies were conducted, the sunscreens prevalent at that time, and how sunscreen is used and applied in practice. To predi...

Sunscreens in organ transplant patients.

Sunscreens in organ transplant patients Claas Ulrich1, Annette Degen2, Manisha J. Patel3 and Eggert Stockfleth1 1Department of Dermatology, Skin Cancer Center Charité, Universitätsmedizin Charité, Berlin, 2Department of Dermatology and Allergology, Hannover Medical University, Germany and 3Department of Dermatology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA Nephrol Dial Tr...