The Dangerous Effect of Tattoos on the Immune System - IRB USI
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Are you aware that when you tattoo your skin, you are also tattooing your immune system? A groundbreaking study by a Swiss the research group led by Prof. Santiago F. González, published today in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), raises new questions about the safety of tattoos. The study by […]

Study

The researchers discovered that once a tattoo is made, the ink rapidly travels through the lymphatic system and, within hours, accumulates in large quantities in the lymph nodes — key organs of the body’s defense system. Inside these nodes, immune cells called macrophages actively capture all types of pigment. This ink uptake triggers an inflammatory response with two phases: an acute phase lasting about two days after tattooing, followed by a chronic phase that can persist for years. The chronic phase is particularly concerning because it weakens the immune system, potentially increasing the susceptibility to infections and cancer. The study also showed that macrophages cannot break down the ink like they would other pathogens, wich causes them to die, especially with red and black inks, suggesting these colors may be more toxic. As a result, ink remains trapped in the lymph nodes in a continuous cycle of capture and cell death, gradually affecting the immune system’s defensive capacity.

The study found that tattooed mice produced significantly lower levels of antibodies after vaccination. This effect is likely due to the impaired function of immune cells that remain associated with tattoo ink for long periods. Similarly, human immune cells previously exposed to ink also showed a weakened response to vaccination.

  • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
    49·
    1 day ago

    The full paper is here and, as usual, it’s hardly anything and decontextualized in order to get a publishable result.

    This one is so bad that it doesn’t use established baselines or do any form of statistical analysis on the results instead opting for their own “baseline” measurements using very small sample sizes. It also plays a smoke and mirrors game where it shows a result for short term immunological response and then uses that to insinuate the ‘slightly reduced but still likely well within the error of the poor control’ long term effects are worth noting.

    Other major flaws:

    • As others have mentioned, mice are a terrible model for this as their skin is very thin and proper tattooing is near impossible.
    • They mention verifying with human cadavers but don’t include any data from those.
    • There was no control group, the baseline was an untreated mouse, not one with an acute foot trauma.
    • Mice age very quickly, best I can tell the immunological markers weren’t age controlled. 2 months out of a <2 year lifespan is a lot of aging. Again, if there was a proper control to measure against.
    • The obsfucation of the raw data into cheesy and unreadable box and whisker plots is hella suspicious.

    At best it’s a very poorly communicated and poorly designed experiment but I suspect that’s due to it result hunting.

    • Hadriscus@jlai.lu
      1·
      21 hours ago

      Thanks for chiming in, but I’m not sure I understand the implications. It’s not trustworthy ? I shouldn’t listen to the conclusions ?

      • SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world
        5·
        12 hours ago

        The implications are the variables are conflated and the conclusions are overblown.

        It should come as no surprise that acute trauma and injecting a foreign substance would cause a relatively significant immunological response. The issue is that for the “chronic phase”, which is where the novelty of this research lies, the evidence shown is far from difinitive compared to the story being told and what results are shown aren’t overly significant.

        Even if you 100% believe the paper the conclusion is that the effect of getting tattooed is, arguably, similar to catching the flu once. However, the paper itself tried to obfuscate that so they have a more impactful result and the marketing/outreach/media site that was linked here doubles down on it trying to sell the story of “tattoos==illness and death”!!!