Genes involved in skin pigmentation have an effect on a person's skin cancer risk beyond their influence on a person's hair or skin colour, a new study shows.
Women who carried one so-called "red hair colour" gene but had medium or olive skin, as opposed to fair skin, actually had the highest skin cancer risk among a group of Caucasian women, Dr Jiali Han of Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues found.
Han and colleagues studied variants of the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene, which influences how the pigment melanin is processed in the skin and helps determine skin colour. The MC1R gene is highly variable among light-skinned populations.
The researchers looked at three variations of the gene strongly linked to red hair, fair skin, and resistance to tanning, which are known as red hair colour (RHC) variants, as well as four variants less strongly linked to red hair, termed non-red hair colour (NRHC) variants, in a subgroup of women participating in the Nurse's Health Study.