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Philadelphia -- A new study suggests that age and socio-economic factors are the strongest determinants of sunburn in the U.S. population.
Philadelphia - A new study suggests that age and socio-economic factors are the strongest determinants of sunburn in the U.S. population.
According to the study, conducted at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and reported in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 39 percent of respondents to a 2003 national survey say they had at least one sunburn in the previous 12 months - a 22 percent increase since 1999. Significantly, this percentage rose dramatically as income and education levels increased and the age of respondents decreased.
A random sample of 207,776 adult respondents provided data for the population-based survey, with the main outcome measure being any report of sunburn within the last 12 months. The variables that predicted sunburn included sex, age, income, education, employment status, race, recent physician care and behavior factors such as drinking and smoking.
The study revealed that: