Brits abroad are notorious for turning red on the first day of their holiday. The trend towards cheaper, out-of-season holidays and winter sun only makes this more likely.
But baring all when you've been covered up all year is a recipe for raising the risk of melanoma - a serious form of skin cancer that can spread rapidly. Far better to take it easy in the sun, a new study from the University of Leeds shows. Doctors already know that people with a lot of moles on their skin have a greater risk of getting melanoma than people who hardly have any. The question is: what causes these moles - or 'nevi', as scientists call them - to appear? The answer lies in our genes and our behaviour, according to Professor Julia Newton-Bishop and colleagues. The University of Leeds researchers studied the genetic make-up of around 1500 men and women with varying numbers of moles. They also asked the people taking part in the study how often they exposed their skin to the sun. They found that people with certain genes on chromosomes 9 and 22 were more likely to have a lot of moles and that these moles tended to be bigger.
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