Severe sunburn linked to increased risk of second-most common skin cancer

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2025-09-25 01:00

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If you’ve had lots of painful, blistering, or severe sunburn over your lifetime, you’re more likely to develop the second-most common type of skin cancer, according to international researchers. The team looked at 17 studies with a combined 321,473 participants (including a study using data from Nambour, Queensland, and one from Geraldton, Western Australia), and found that medium to high frequencies of painful, blistering, and/or severe sunburns over a lifetime, as well as lots of such sunburns during childhood were associated with a higher risk of Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC).

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Dermatology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Texas, USA

Funder: This research was supported by the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas RR190078 (DrWehner), as well as, in part, by Cancer Center Support Grant P30 CA016672. DrWehner is supported by grant No. K08CA263298 from the National Cancer Institute (NIH) and is a Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas Scholar. Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funders had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

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