A team of researchers from Rutgers University's Susan Lehman Cullman Laboratory for Cancer Research have found that the most widely used skin moisturizers are causing skin tumors in mice.

Lead researcher Allan H. Conney writes that the research, whose results are published in the Aug. 14 issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, found that Dermabase, made by Patrick Laboratories in Minneapolis; Dermovan, made by Galderma Laboratory Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas; Eucerin Original Moisturizing Cream, made by Beiersdorf of Hamburg Germany; and Vanicream, made by Pharmaceutical Specialties Inc., in Rochester, Minn. are causing skin cancers to develop faster.

It is still unclear whether the same effect is also found in humans. However, the researchers made a moisturizing cream themselves, and it was not tumorigenic like the commercial products they tested. It is still unclear which ingredients are responsible for the rapid tumor growth.

Melanoma is the cancer which affects melanocytes, cells located in the bottom layer of the skin's epidermis and in the middle layer of the eye. This means that while melanoma is almost always skin cancer, the tumor can also be located in the eye, and, sometimes, in the bowel. When distant metastasis occurs in melanoma, the disease is considered incurable, with a median survival of 6 to 12 months. The patient in the study had metastasis tumors in the lungs and a lymph node.

About 62,480 people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with melanoma in 2008, the most deadly type of skin cancer. Also, about 11,200 people will die of skin cancer this year although its rate of survival is of 95 percent when caught early.