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Volume 10 Supplement 1

de Senectute: Age and Health Forum

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Aging and photoaging

Skin aging is not a unique phenomenon but it is commonly divided into two different processes: chronological aging and photo-aging. Therefore we recognise two different phenotypes of skin aging. Chronological aging represents the structural, functional and metabolic changes in the skin that parallel the aging and degenerative changes in other body organs. Photo-aging is a consequence of oxidative damage due to overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) sunlight - both UVA and UVB (responsible for sunburn, basal and squamous cell carcinoma). Conditions of variable UV exposure may result from different latitudes, alteration of atmosphere, job (farmer towards bank employer), different behaviour to sun bathing [1]. A lot of different theories have been proposed to explain the phenomenon of aging. Many of them are interlinked. The deceleration of the mortality rate is one of the most intriguing recent findings in longevity research.

References

  1. Rabe JH, Mamelak AJ, McElgunn PJ, Morison WL, Sauder DN: Photoaging: mechanisms and repair. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2006, 55 (1): 1-19. 10.1016/j.jaad.2005.05.010.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Calvieri, S. Aging and photoaging. BMC Geriatr 10 (Suppl 1), L32 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-10-S1-L32

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2318-10-S1-L32

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