SKIN PIGMENTATION IN CAUCASIAN BABIES IS HIGH AND EVENLY DISTRIBUTED THROUGHOUT THE BODY

To investigate if Caucasian babies have particular sun sensitive skin and if skin pigmentation before any sun exposure is uniform throughout the body, we measured skin pigmentation objectively by skin reflectan ce spectroscopy in IO anatomical sites in 20 healthy Caucasian babies (mean age 5 months, range 1 to 10 months) chat had not been sun expose d previously. We found that skin pigmentation at all the measured site s was significantly higher than the constitutive pigmentation in Cauca sian adults (P<0.01). Furthermore; the level of skin pigmentation in a ll the 10 measured sites in the babies was statistically not different (P<0.31) and there was no gender differences in pigmentation for any site.