I’m a scientist – here’s what tattoos really do to your body and how they can be deadly
NOWADAYS tattoos are pretty common place.
It’s easy to walk into a tattoo parlour to get a little scribble on your arm or back.
But did you know that getting one can trigger a whole immune response in your body?
And that it could influence how your body responds to infection threats?
Scientists explained how your body reacts to getting inked – and when a tattoo-induced infection can be deadly.
What happens to your body when you’re tattooed?
When a tattoo needle stamps a pattern into your skin, the body considers it an assault.
This is because your skin acts as the immune system’s ‘first barrier’, Juliet Morrison, a virologist at UC Riverside told The Atlantic.
Your skin is packed with fast-acting defensive cells that can leap into action when it’s breached by something like a tattoo gun, she continued.
Their role is to detect anything foreign and destroy it so the healing process can begin – and in the cases of burns, cuts and grazes, this works pretty well.
But your body’s healing mechanism changes when ink is involved.
Particles in pigments are bulky and difficult for an immune cell’s enzymes to break down.
So when your immune cells try to process ink, they can’t digest it as they usually would.
Instead, they transform it into a microscopic version of gum, making it visible at the surface of your skin.
Does ink affect your immune system?
Scientists aren’t sure about this.
The cells that usually break down pathogens are called macrophages.
Juliet asked: “What if you are forcing them to take care of these foreign clumps of pigment instead of doing immune surveillance?”
The expert explained that if these are blocked with ink then they might put the immune system at a disadvantage if a new tattoo ends up inflamed, infected, or triggers allergies.
But Sandrine Henri, an immunologist at France’s Center of Immunology of Marseille-Luminy, was less worried.
In the event of a major attack, ink-laden cells would probably be able to call in reinforcements to waylay the threat, she said.
And it’s very possible that the macrophages would only temporarily discombobulated by the ink they swallow.
Other researchers have suggested that (sterile) damage caused to skin by tattoos could in fact improve your immune response, keeping the cells primed for any attack.
Christopher Lynn, an anthropologist at the University of Alabama studying heavily tattooed people across the world, found that people who frequently get tattoos have higher levels of certain immune molecules, including antibodies, in their blood than people who rarely get inked, at least for a brief time.
He theorised that frequent tattooing could give the immune system a regular, low-intensity workout – but he hastened to add that this immunity ‘won’t cure colds’.
Can tattoo infections be deadly?
According to research, infections from tattoos are rare – people only get them five or six per cent of the time.
And when they do occur, they’re most commonly bacterial.
But in rare cases, people can end up with dangerous viruses, including hepatitis C, according to Danielle Tartar, a dermatologist at UC Davis.
Hepatitis C is a virus that can infect the liver, which can sometimes cause serious and potentially life-threatening damage to the organ, if left untreated.
It’s commonly spread through sharing unsterilised needles or blood-to-blood contact. About one in four people fight the virus off themselves, but others can carry it in their system for many years, causing cirrhosis and liver failure.
NHS guidance said around 118,000 people in the UK had chronic hepatitis C in 2019 – but noted that modern treatments make it possible to cure the infection.
When it comes to tattoos, Danielle emphasised that with modern advances in sanitation, most people ‘do just fine’.
What makes tattoos last?
Sandrine found that macrophages – the cells that usually break down pathogens – have a taste for ink.
Macrophages only live for a matter of days or weeks. So you’d think as they come apart and release the ink within them, the tattoo that you paid a pretty penny for would fade.
But surrounding macrophages gulp up the ink and this explains why some tattoos become fuzzy over time.
And experts say that the ink could pass to your lymph nodes, making them the colour of the ink, Gary Kobinger, an immunologist at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch said.
Could tattoo technology be used for vaccines?
While a tattoo needle usually injects ink into the skin, vaccines are administered in muscles, which have fewer immune cells.
Gary described skin as a “a formidable place to administer vaccines,”
“The cells are already on site, and there is an immediate reaction,” he said.
The technique – called the intradermal route – has recently been used for shots against mpox.
However, it needs more training to administer and if done wrong, the vaccine will be less effective.
Smallpox, tuberculosis and rabies jabs are also injected into the skin rather than the muscle.
Tattooing devices, complete with vaccine vials, could, in theory, circumvent those pitfalls, Gary said.
If the technology advances, he continued, people might someday need fewer injections of some multidose shots.
Tattoo artists have suggested you avoid certain body parts when you get inked.
Claudio Traina, an artist at Sixty Ink in London, said some ask for their eyeballs to be tattooed, which can be dangerous and verge on mutilation.
He also said the most infection prone spots for tattoos are the inner lips and genitals.
Claudio told The Sun some key signs of infection to watch out for:
- redness around the tattoo
- if the area is hot to touch and feels like it’s pulsing
- pain at the site of the tattoo
- pus oozing out
Doing you research about where you get your tattoo is also important – a cheap deal might leave you with a host of complications, he warned.