Tattoos have been linked to lymphatic system cancer

Expressing your identity can be detrimental to your health

Tattoos may be a risk factor for lymphatic cancer, a new study suggests. However, the researchers emphasize the need for more research on this topic.

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Knowledge about the long-term health effects of tattoos is currently sparse, and there is not much research in this area. Now a research team from Lund University has examined the link between tattoos and lymphoma.

“We identified people diagnosed with lymphoma using population registries. These people were then matched with a sex- and age-matched control group without lymphoma. Study participants answered a questionnaire about lifestyle factors to determine whether they had tattoos or not,” — notes Christel Nielsen.

A total of 11,905 people took part in the study. Of these, 2,938 respondents fell ill with lymphoma between the ages of 20 and 60 years. Among them, 1398 participants responded to the questionnaire, while the number of participants in the control group was 4193. In the group with lymphoma, 289 people had a tattoo, while in the control group without a diagnosis of lymphoma, 735 respondents had a tattoo.

“After taking into account other important factors such as smoking and age, we found that the risk of developing lymphoma was 21 percent higher among those who had tattoos. It is important to remember that lymphoma — rare disease and that our results are applicable at the group level. Now the results need to be further verified and studied in other studies, and such studies are ongoing,” — says Nielsen.

Before the study began, the research team hypothesized that tattoo size would influence the risk of developing lymphoma. They believed that a full-body tattoo may be associated with a greater risk of cancer compared to, for example, a small butterfly on the shoulder. Unexpectedly, it turned out that the area of ​​the tattooed body surface does not matter.

“We don’t yet know why this happened. One can only assume that a tattoo, regardless of size, causes minor inflammation in the body, which in turn can cause cancer. Thus, the picture turns out to be more complex than we initially thought,” — explains the specialist.

Most people, statistically, get their first tattoo at a young age, which means that a person's body is exposed to tattoo ink for most of their life. Despite this, research has only scratched the surface of the long-term health effects of drawing.

“We already know that when tattoo ink is injected into the skin, the body interprets it as something foreign that shouldn't be there, and the immune system is activated. Most of the ink is transferred from the skin to the lymph nodes, where it is deposited,” — explains Nielsen.

The research team will now continue to study whether there is any connection between tattoos and other types of cancer. They also want to conduct further research into other inflammatory diseases to see if there is a link with tattoos.

«People are likely to want to continue to express their identity through tattoos, and so it is important that we both the public could be convinced that it was safe. It is good for everyone to know that tattoos can affect your health and that you should contact your healthcare provider if you experience symptoms that you think may be related to your tattoo,” — concludes Christel Nielsen.