Do tattoos lead to cancer?

-
A new study has claimed that people with tattoos are more likely to develop lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, which affects the immune system.

The study was conducted under the leadership of a team from Lund University in Sweden. The results suggest that getting a tattoo could put your risk of developing lymphoma by 21%.

The study relied on analyzing data from 11,905 people, including 2,938 people who developed lymphoma when they were between 20 and 60 years old.

The new study, published in the journal eClinicalMedicine, suggests that tattoos could be a risk factor for lymphoma. However, researchers stress the need for more research on this topic.

“We identified people who had been diagnosed with lymphoma through population records,” says Christel Nielsen, a researcher at Lund University who led the study. “These individuals were then matched to a control group of the same sex and age, but without lymphoma.” The study participants responded They take a questionnaire about lifestyle factors to determine whether they are tattooed or not.”

In the group with lymphoma, 21% (289 individuals) were tattooed, while 18% were tattooed in the control group without a diagnosis of lymphoma (735 individuals).

After looking at other relevant factors, such as smoking and age, the researchers found that the risk of lymphoma was 21% higher among those who tattooed.

The researchers also found that the size of the tattoo does not matter, so having a full-body tattoo does not increase the risk any more than smaller tattoos.

However, researchers are not sure why this happens. "One can only speculate that tattoos, regardless of their size, trigger low-grade inflammation in the body, which in turn can lead to cancer. So the picture is more complex than we initially thought," Dr. Nielsen said.

He added: "We already know that when tattoo ink is injected into the skin, the body interprets it as something foreign that should not be there, and the immune system is activated. A large portion of the ink is transported away from the skin to the lymph nodes where it is deposited."

The research group will now continue to conduct studies into whether there is any link between tattoos and other types of cancer. They also want to do more research on other inflammatory diseases to see if there is a link to tattoos.