Your skin color may affect how well a medication works for you — but the research is way behind

Close-up of a black woman rubbing a lotion onto her hand.

Your skin color may influence how safe and effective a given drug is for you, a new analysis suggests.

In a recent think piece, published Oct. 9 in the journal Human Genomics, scientists examined a plethora of studies, revealing that melanin — the pigment that gives our skin, hair and eyes their color — can absorb certain drugs that are either applied to the skin or taken orally, thus affecting how much of a dose makes it to the tissues that need treatment.