Relevance of skin phototyping to a Korean population

We have determined skin phototype by a self-reporting questionnaire proposed by Fitzpatrick in 128 Korean medical students. We also measured the minimal erythema dose (MED), minimal melanogenic dose and investigated their relationship to phototype. A questionnaire of skin phototypes revealed that 13.3% of the students are skin phototypes I and II. Based on MEDs, we demonstrated that 14.8% of the students fall into the UV-sensitive group as defined by an MED of less than 40 mJ/cm2, which is the upper range of MED of phototypes I and II in a white population. The skin phototypes did not show a positive correlation to MEDs and only 2.3% of students classified as skin phototypes I and II showed an MED below 40 mJ/cm2. This study indicates that the skin phototyping method proposed by Fitzpatrick does not reliably predict UV-sensitive individuals within the Korean population.