The consistent use of sunscreen in infancy and childhood could dramatically reduce the incidence of malignant melanoma in adulthood, according to a new study.

The research, conducted by scientists at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute, was driven by the fact that despite the increasing use of sunscreen in recent decades, the incidence of malignant melanoma, the most aggressive form of skin cancer, continues to rise dramatically.

According to the American Cancer Society, more than 75,000 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the United States this year.

"While sunscreen is highly effective in preventing sunburn, this paradox has led some to question whether sunscreen is effective in preventing melanoma caused by ultraviolet (UV) light," John VandeBerg, senior author of the study, said in a statement. "It has been suggested that sunscreen enables people to receive more UV exposure without becoming sunburned, and that increased exposure to UV light has led to an increasing incidence of melanoma."

For the study, researchers tested an over-the-counter facial lotion containing SPF 15 sunscreen for its ability to prevent UV-induced melanoma on gray short-tailed opossums, small marsupials from South America.

They found that the application of lotion containing sunscreen to infant opossums led to a 10-fold reduction in pre-melanotic lesions, which are known to progress to melanoma, in comparison to infant opossums receiving lotion that did not contain sunscreen.

Researchers said the pre-melanotic lesions did not appear until the infants had become adolescents.

Previous experiments established that the pre-melanocytic lesions in opossums do not progress to melanomas until the animals are well into adulthood, as typically occurs in humans.

"Based on these results, we speculate that the reason it is particularly important that sunscreens be used consistently in childhood, and especially in infancy, is because skin cells during growth are dividing much more rapidly than in adulthood, and it is during cell division that the cells are most susceptible to UV-induced damage," VandeBerg said. "Evidence that supports this hypothesis is that melanoma is not induced in adult opossums when their shaved skin is irradiated by UV light in the absence of sunscreen."

The findings were recently published in the scientific journal Pigment Cell and Melanoma.