文身须谨慎：医生警告15年后仍可造成感染

Tattoos can cause infections 15 years after they were drawn, doctors have warned after a woman was admitted to hospital suffering enlarged lymph nodes.

医生提醒，文身在时隔15年后仍然可能造成感染。此前，一名妇女因为淋巴结肿大，被收治入院。

The 30-year-old Australian feared she had cancer after noticing painful lumps in her armpit.

这名30岁的澳大利亚妇女发现腋窝出现肿块且有痛感，怀疑自己得了癌症。

However when doctors at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Sydney removed the tissue it was found to be harmless.

但是，在悉尼皇家阿尔弗雷德王子医院的医生摘除这块组织后，发现其是无害的。

Experts concluded that the lumps were caused by a reaction to tattooing which had been done 15 years previously, and have urged doctors to ask about tattoos when patients are suffering from lymphoma.

专家们判断，肿块是身体对15年前文身的反应造成的，因而要求医生在接诊淋巴瘤患者时询问是否有文身史。

Doctors have known for some time that tattoo ink travels to the lymph nodes – which are used by the body to clear out toxins in the body – because the nodes can change to the same colour of the ink. But the new study shows the effect can still happen more than a decade after a person gets a tattoo.

早前医生就知道，文身墨水可以游走到清除人体毒素的淋巴结，因为渗入文身墨水的淋巴结也会呈现出墨水的颜色。而这项新研究则表明，在十多年后，文身仍然可能发生墨水渗入淋巴结的现象。

Around one third of young adults now has a tattoo in Britain but recent research by the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) found that toxic nanoparticles of titanium dioxide found in tattoo ink can travel through the body and become lodged in the lymph nodes where they can cause problems.

现在，英国年轻成年人中约有1/3文过身。但是，欧洲同步加速辐射中心前不久的研究表明，文身墨水中的有毒纳米粒子二氧化钛可以在全身游走并在淋巴结停留，它们在那里会引发问题。

“When someone wants to get a tattoo, they are often very careful in choosing a parlour where they use sterile needles that haven?t been used previously.

“当有人想纹身时，他们会非常谨慎的选择一个纹身店，在那里使用未用过的无菌针头。”

“No one checks the chemical composition of the colours, but our study shows that maybe they should”, said Hiram Castillo, one of the authors of the study and scientist at the ESRF.

该论文的作者之一、欧洲同步加速辐射中心的科研人员海勒姆.卡斯蒂略说：“没有人检查文身彩墨的化学成分，我们的研究说明，恐怕大家应当检查下。”

There are few studies which have looked at the toxic impact of tattoo ink, which can contain preservatives and contaminants like nickel, chromium, manganese or cobalt.

很少有研究去检查纹身墨水的有毒影响，这些墨水中可能含有防腐剂和镍、铬、锰和钴等污染物。

“We already knew that pigments from tattoos would travel to the lymph nodes because of visual evidence: the lymph nodes become tinted with the colour of the tattoo,” said Bernhard Hesse, one of the two first authors of the study and ESRF visiting scientist.

论文的主要作者之一、欧洲同步加速辐射中心客座研究人员伯恩哈德.赫西说：“我们之前就知道，文身的颜料可以游走到淋巴结，因为有视觉证据——淋巴结的颜色变得和纹身的颜色一样。”

“It is the response of the body to clean the site of entrance of the tattoo. What we didn’t know is that they do it in a nano form, which implies that they may not have the same behaviour as the particles at a micro level. And that is the problem: we don’t know how nanoparticles react.”

他说：“它是身体的反应，以清理纹身通道的入口。我们之前不知道的是，它们能以纳米粒子的形式游走。也就是说，它们可能与微米粒子的表现不一样。于是，问题就来了：我们不了解纳米粒子的影响。”

The new case study was published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

这项新研究发表在美国《内科学纪事》杂志上。