A new study from Australia provides the strongest evidence yet that regular sunscreen use helps keep skin looking younger.
While dermatologists have long believed sunscreen fights wrinkling, the study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine is the first to demonstrate it in a years-long human trial. “It’s a very important study,” says Henry Lim, a dermatologist at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and member of the American Academy of Dermatology.
The study of 903 adults under age 55 found that after 4.5 years, those assigned to slather on sunscreen at least once a day saw 24% less skin aging — at least on the back of their hands — than those left to follow any sunscreen habits they liked. Researchers who looked for wrinkles and other texture changes on molds made from the skin of the regular sunscreen users saw no significant changes: they gave them, on average, the same grade, on a 0-6 scale, at the end of the study as at the beginning.
The study does not show sunscreen would have the same effects in people over age 55, whose skin changes more rapidly because of the effects of aging itself. Participants in the study had an average age of 39.
Until now, the best evidence that sunscreen prevents so-called photoaging — the visible signs of aging caused by the sun’s ultraviolet rays — came from studies in hairless mice. But human studies have shown that
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