Patient Information
Solar ElastosisSkin thickening caused by sun damage
Not skin cancer itself, but an important marker of elevated skin cancer risk.
In short: Solar elastosis is a thickening and coarsening of the skin caused by years of UV exposure, producing thickened, coarse-pored, yellowish-sallow skin with deep wrinkles on sun-exposed areas. It is not itself a skin cancer precursor, but indicates a significant sun-exposure history and is linked to a markedly elevated risk of non-melanoma skin cancer.
Overview
Solar elastosis is a thickening and coarsening of the skin caused by years of UV exposure: the elastic fibres of the dermis degenerate and are deposited in a disorganised form. Clinically, this presents as thickened, coarse-pored, often yellowish-sallow skin with deep wrinkles, usually on chronically sun-exposed areas such as the face, neck and forearms.
Solar elastosis itself is not a skin cancer precursor. However, it indicates a significant history of sun exposure and is associated with a markedly elevated risk of non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC): tissue samples from basal cell and squamous cell carcinomas show a three- to four-fold increase in elastotic tissue compared with normal sun-exposed skin.
Treatment Options
Because solar elastosis reflects the pre-existing skin damage from which actinic keratoses and non-melanoma skin cancer can later develop, treating it is deliberately the first step of skin cancer prevention within the Dermetrics concept, long before medical treatment becomes necessary.
Sources
- Kligman L.H. & Murphy G.F. (analyt.), Solar damage in skin tumors: quantification of elastotic material, PubMed.
- Rittié L. & Fisher G.J., Extrinsic aging: age-associated skin lesions linked to UV radiation.