Chronological Aging in African-American Skin: A Reliable Photonumeric Scale Demonstrates Age and Body Mass Index as Contributing Factors

Increased photoprotection by natural melanin allows for African-Americans to be less impacted by photoaging than Caucasians. However, less is known about chronological aging in this population. To create a photonumeric scale for African-Americans to evaluate chronological skin aging and to explore contributing elements to intrinsic aging. Standardized photographs of the upper inner arm were taken from 75 African-American participants. Five participants were chosen as standards to create a 9-point photonumeric scale (0 = none, 8 = most severe). The scale was utilized by three blinded dermatologists to independently rate participants' photographs. The interrater agreements were 0.768 (95% CI: 0.671–0.834) for trial 1 and 0.725 (0.608–0.794) for trial 2. The intrarater agreements were 0.757 (0.596–0.875), 0.850 (0.771–0.903), and 0.790 (0.686–0.855) for the three raters. Averaged chronological aging scores were correlated with participants' survey responses, which revealed age as a significant predictor (r = 0.72, p