Current knowledge about the long-term effects on health of permanent tattoos is limited, and there isn’t much research in this field.
However, a new study conducted in Sweden comes with a warning. There might be a link between tattoos and lymphatic cancer, writes New York Post.
The new study, recently published in eClinicalMedicine, suggests that tattoos could be a risk factor for lymphatic system cancer (lymphoma). Specifically, individuals with tattoos have a 21% higher risk of being diagnosed with this type of cancer.
In the study conducted on over 11,000 individuals, the size of the tattoo did not seem to be important.
Researchers thought that a full-body tattoo could be associated with a higher cancer risk compared to a smaller tattoo. Unexpectedly, the study revealed that the tattooed body surface area did not matter.
"We still don't know why this happened. It can only be speculated that a tattoo, regardless of size, triggers a low-grade inflammation in the body, which, in turn, can trigger cancer. The picture is, therefore, more complex than we initially thought," said the study's authors.
Most people get their first tattoo at a young age, which means they are exposed to tattoo ink for a large part of their life. Nevertheless, research only demonstrates a small part of the potential long-term effects of tattoos on health.
"We already know that when tattoo ink is injected into the skin, the body interprets this as something foreign that shouldn't be there, and the immune system is activated. A large part of the ink is transported away from the skin to the lymph nodes, where it is deposited," explained Christel Nielsen, a researcher at Lund University who led the study.
However, researchers emphasize the need for more research on this topic, as more and more people opt for these procedures. In the US, 22% of the population has tattoos.