As we age our skin becomes thinner and loses fat, making it less plump and smooth. It also bruises more easily and take longer to heal. These changes lead to wrinkles, age spots and dryness. Sunlight and cigarette smoking also contribute to wrinkles. Wrinkling increases with the amount of cigarettes and number of years a person has smoked. Increased pigmentation (darker skin tone) is associated with protection from sun damage. Darker-skinned people are less likely to develop a sunburn after intense sun exposure, and have a lower incidence of skin cancer. In addition, darkly pigmented subjects have significantly less induction of collagen breakdown and less DNA damage than lightly pigmented subjects.4
Photoaging is the premature aging of the skin due to chronic exposure of skin to ultraviolet (UV) light, predominantly from the sun or sun beds. Photoaging ranges from wrinkled, discolored skin through to precancerous lesions, actinic keratoses. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified genetic variants in the MC1R gene and the STXBP5L gene that were important determinants for severe photoaging. [1,2]
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Photoaging