Naked Science Forum
General Science => Question of the Week => Topic started by: MeganM on 27/01/2020 16:33:15
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Robin asks:
"I heard in the podcast, that the reason we get sunburned is that the body is trying to fix cells that are damaged by UV radiation. So if a person is sunburned way longer than someone else, does that mean their immune system is worse?"
We're looking into this for the show. What do people think?
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As I understand it, the damage of sunburn is due to UV light damaging DNA in cells. The cell tries to repair the damage, but if repair fails, the cell commits suicide (apoptosis) to reduce the number of DNA mutations that may lead to future cancer.
The inflammation of sunburn is caused by the immune system trying to "gobble up" the skin cells that have been killed by the UV. Then the skin must regrow from deeper stem cells.
The worse the UV exposure, the longer it will take to recover.
Those with more melanin in their skin will absorb more of the damaging UV before it damages the DNA, and so will recover more quickly.
As a child growing up in Australia, I sometimes had large areas of skin peel off after a bad dose of sunburn. In those days, the only thing people put on their skin was oil to make their skin glisten, with zero UV protection. We now know that sunburn increases the chance of skin cancer, and medical authorities actively promote the use of UV-protective sunscreen.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunburn#Signs_and_symptoms
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Thanks for your participation in this discussion! If you want to find out more, we answered it in last week's podcast, when Adam Murphy spoke to dermatologist Jane Sterling, and you can listen to it here:
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/question-week/can-weak-immune-system-worsen-sunburn
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Robin asks:
"I heard in the podcast, that the reason we get sunburned is that the body is trying to fix cells that are damaged by UV radiation. So if a person is sunburned way longer than someone else, does that mean their immune system is worse?"
We're looking into this for the show. What do people think?
I am also wondering what getting a sunburn less fast means due to the immunsystem etc?
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It's an indication of the speed of response of one part of the system, with a strong genetic component. Among caucasians, there is a significant difference between "celtic-type" (skin burns to red under mild exposure) and "nordic-type" (skin tans quickly to a safe bronze) folk, despite their ancestry being in geographically close and similar areas. There doesn't seem to be any correlation with immunity to infection or idiopathic disease (heart, cancer, etc).
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I am not a doctor or anything but I guess it has nothing to do with the immunity of one or each, however, it simply just depends on your skin type and how used to the sun you are.