Change your eye colour and skin tone with the popping of a pill


Imagine going a gorgeous golden colour without having to bake for hours in the sun or use a fake tan. To make your skin colour change chemically, all you would need to do is pop a pill or apply a cream.

You may soon be able to alter your skin tone, and maybe even your eye colour, as easily and as often as you dye your hair but with a lot less mess while protecting your skin from sun damage and cancer.

Scientists are finally beginning to understand the mechanisms behind tanning. And rather than just making it possible to darken pigments it has become clear that it should be just as easy to lighten skin tone, too, an idea now being taken up by cosmetic companies.

So whether you are a redhead who fancies a deep, dark skin colour and black hair, or if you are black-skinned or Asian and would rather be a fair-skinned blond with blue eyes, all you have to do is take a tablet or slap on a cream for a couple of weeks. Or at least until you fancy changing again.

Given that one of the best defences against skin cancer is a natural tan built up over several weeks, scientists have sought to unravel the mechanisms that make this possible.

It has long been known that skin, hair and eye colour are mostly influenced by a dark pigment called melanin.

But previously it was thought that tanning was a response to the ultraviolet radiation in sunlight damaging DNA. This was thought to activate the melanin-producing centres within the cells, known as melanocytes, as a sort of natural defence.

Spray-on dyes aside, some existing fake tans act on this theory by using a synthetic version of a long-known hormone to try to boost melanin production.

However, this tends to work only for people who have no problem with melanin production, leaving the fair-skinned no better off probably because their melanocytes cannot produce enough melanin.

Now, research by skin cancer expert Dr David Fisher and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, in Massachusetts, has shown that damage to DNA is not a necessary step in getting a tan.

It is also quite feasible that the same mechanisms could be manipulated to inhibit melanin production rather than stimulate it to lighten skin rather than darken it, he said.

Many black people, particularly women, have tried to lighten their skin. But lightening creams have, so far, been dangerous. Some contain mercury, which causes neurological and kidney damage, speech and hearing impairments and psychiatric disorders. Others include hydroquinone, which causes blue-black discolouration and leads to neuropathy, a neurological disease.

So for those intent on lightening their skin, the new findings could be a welcome breakthrough.

Cosmetics firms are excited and Avon has already filed a patent for a skin lightening process that takes advantage of this latest knowledge.

Previous work by Fisher has shown hairs tend to go grey when melanocytes at their roots die off. Other research suggests this can be remedied by applying chemicals that trigger melanin production or cause genes to express it.

Latest glaucoma drugs have shown melanin levels in the iris can be influenced chemically, causing eye colour to change.

So, in theory, the mechanisms that decide eye colour could also be manipulated chemically or genetically.