The researchers discovered that once a tattoo is made, the ink rapidly travels through the lymphatic system and, within hours, accumulates in large quantities in the lymph nodes — key organs of the body’s defense system. Inside these nodes, immune cells called macrophages actively capture all types of pigment. This ink uptake triggers an inflammatory response with two phases: an acute phase lasting about two days after tattooing, followed by a chronic phase that can persist for years. The chronic phase is particularly concerning because it weakens the immune system, potentially increasing the susceptibility to infections and cancer. The study also showed that macrophages cannot break down the ink like they would other pathogens, wich causes them to die, especially with red and black inks, suggesting these colors may be more toxic. As a result, ink remains trapped in the lymph nodes in a continuous cycle of capture and cell death, gradually affecting the immune system’s defensive capacity.
The study found that tattooed mice produced significantly lower levels of antibodies after vaccination. This effect is likely due to the impaired function of immune cells that remain associated with tattoo ink for long periods. Similarly, human immune cells previously exposed to ink also showed a weakened response to vaccination.
There are far too many humans with tattoos that could have been researched extensively, but they chose mice. Mice do not have the same kind of skin density as humans, and I doubt a tattoo artist or researcher would have the talent to tattoo a mouse’s skin.
There’s just so many things wrong with using mice in this study. So many bad ratios with the size of the animal. I mean, for fuck’s sake, tattoo artists already practice on pig skin. Pigs would have been a better analogue, but honestly, they should have picked the millions of humans who were already tattooing themselves.
Of course, if they did that, they wouldn’t get the same result and be able to push this sensationalist science news title, now would they? Except, in this case, we’ve gone from research paper to straight to sensationalist news title in one step! Just let the institute PR department push the narrative for you, without having to wait for that pesky news cycle to crawl through the telephone game.
You are generally not wrong but where can you find people who are tattooed, not yet vaccinated, but happy to get vaccinated for this study? It is wrong to say this definitely works the same in humans, but it is not easy to setup such a study.
Within a single city, hundreds of people get tattoos each day. A large cross-section of those probably haven’t refreshed their COVID vaccine, but only because they haven’t gotten around to it.
Human subjects are crazy to work with for a few reasons
Laboratory mice literally live 5 to a cage with almost no diet variability, in a controlled environment. Yes shit does happen with research mice, but it’s something that is easy to control overall.
And yet, we manage to have hundreds of thousands of studies written about humans with human subjects. This sounds like a boatload of excuses that could be summed up as “science is hard”. Sure, it’s hard, but it’s better than putting out a flawed study that can’t scale properly.
You don’t need to sum it up as science is hard but also as science is expensive. They might simply not have gotten funding for something as that.
Sure, the study would be best if we did a randomised double blind study on a sample of 100 people that all are going to get a tattoo anyway but that doesn’t make the mouse study irrelevant.
Mice and humans, although very different in appearance have biomechanics that are very similar. For every human study you could make a 20 mouse studies with the same funding so you could do a lot more exploration.
This study found something, notably that ink in the blood affected the immune system. This just means that future studies are needed like injecting people with tattoo ink and blood samples diagnosis after tattoo to see how much ink is in the blood. If confirmed this will push tattoo ink manufacturers to develop a new ink that eliminates the effect and we can all enjoy safer more effective tattooing.
This study is not flawed, it’s pushing human knowledge forward like it always does.
You’re freaking out over over a single study. This is the beginning of a more comprehensive investigation. Chill your cornhole 🙂
Unless we dissect the original paper in its entirety, I don’t think we should dismiss their methods out of hand.
I’ll reserve judgement until peer-reviews can confirm or rebuke the results.
I think it’s more the news article that’s upselling it and with it being “groundbreaking”, it is likely only at the initial stages.
Mice are usually the first phase are they do have a similar immune response (systemically), have a fast metabolism and quick to mature. They’re also clones, which helps eliminate external factors that could contribute to what they’re studying. More or less, mice are just a quicker litmus test to just show that something is possible and if it warrants a study on a closer analogue.
Just use pigs.
Basically the same thing as a human (except for the opposable thumbs, which explains us eating them), but cleaner and smarter on average.