Breakthrough may let redheads react less gingerly to sunny days

Experts have always assumed that pale-skinned people burn in the sun owing to their inability to make melanin, the pigment created and stored in skin cells to protect them against the sun's ultra-violet radiation (UVR).

Now researchers from Bradford University have found that those with very fair skin are able to make as much melanin as people with olive skin, or even more.

But the team from the university's Centre for Skin Sciences found that fair skin cells showed a higher inflammatory response to UVR than their olive-skinned counterparts.

Study lead author Prof Des Tobin said: "Research into sunburn has tended to ignore melanocytes – the cells that make melanin – as it's been assumed that was all they did.

"But our research has shown that in some skin types they also contribute to the inflammation that creates sunburn and it's this, rather than their ability to make melanin, that seems to be at the root of how different skins respond to the sun.

"So targeting these cells with anti-inflammatory interventions could offer a new way of protecting more vulnerable skin types from sunburn."