Will Your Moisturizer Give You Cancer?

Aug. 14, 2008— -- A new study linking moisturizers to skin cancer in mice may have some worried that chemicals lurking in their bottles of skin lotion could mean danger down the road.

But while some dermatology experts believe this study may open the door to further research, most say that the study is, at best, scare science -- and at worst, just plain bad science.

Researchers from Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., tested skin moisturizing creams on mice to determine whether their use is linked to cancer. To do this, they exposed hairless mice to ultraviolet radiation to mimic sun exposure, and afterward treated the mice with one of four popular moisturizers -- Dermabase, Dermavan, Eucerin or Vanicream.

They found that the mice treated with moisturizers after the exposure to ultraviolet light grew more skin tumors -- and that these tumors were larger than those on untreated mice.

Lead investigator Allan Conney, a professor of cancer and leukemia research at Rutgers, said the study should cause concern over the safety of many moisturizers.

"I think it raises a red flag indicating that there's a need to determine whether or not these products could cause this problem in people," Conney said. "And we really don't know that from this study, which looked only at mice. ... People aren't mice."

However, the researchers wrote in the report, the cancer-causing properties of these moisturizers might in part explain the rise in skin cancer cases over the last few years.

Already, skin cancer affects thousands of Americans each year. The American Cancer Society estimates that each year 59,940 people will be diagnosed with melanoma, the most serious form of skin cancer, and that about 8,400 people will die from the disease.

These cases appear to be on the rise. A report published in the July issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, which analyzed more than 20,000 cases of melanoma in people between the ages of 15 and 39, found that the incidence of melanoma in young women rose to 13.9 per 100,000 people in 2004, up from 9.4 per 100,000 people in 1980. In young men, melanoma rates leveled off between 1980 and 2004, settling at 7.7 per 100,000 people in 2004.