The pores and skin is the largest organ of the physique, and it performs an important function as the primary line of protection in opposition to pathogens and insults from the exterior surroundings.
It supplies necessary features like temperature regulation and moisture retention. And regardless of the misunderstanding that lipids hurt your pores and skin by inflicting oiliness and zits, they really play an important function in sustaining the pores and skin barrier.
Lipids – natural compounds that embody fat, oils, waxes and different sorts of molecules – are important parts of the outermost layer of pores and skin. Changes to the pores and skin’s lipid composition can disrupt its means to operate as a protecting barrier, resulting in a vary of pores and skin illnesses, together with eczema and psoriasis.
Human pores and skin is colonized by hundreds of species of micro organism. One of the commonest microbes on the pores and skin, Cutibacterium acnes, or C. acnes, is well-known for its potential involvement in inflicting zits, however its broader results on pores and skin well being are much less understood.
I’m a researcher in dermatology working within the Gallo Lab on the University of California, San Diego. My colleagues and I examine how the pores and skin defends the physique in opposition to infections and the surroundings, with a specific deal with the pores and skin microbiome, or the microbes residing on the pores and skin. In our not too long ago printed analysis carried out in collaboration with SILAB, an organization creating energetic elements for skincare merchandise, we discovered that C. acnes triggers sure pores and skin cells to considerably enhance manufacturing of lipids which are necessary to sustaining the pores and skin barrier.
Skin micro organism and lipid synthesis
To decide the function that micro organism play in lipid manufacturing, we uncovered keratinocytes, the cells that make up the dermis, to totally different micro organism naturally current on the pores and skin and analyzed modifications in lipid composition.
Of the frequent pores and skin micro organism we examined, solely C. acnes triggered an enhance in lipid manufacturing inside these cells. More particularly, we discovered a threefold enhance in complete lipids, together with ceramides, ldl cholesterol, free fatty acids and particularly triglycerides. Each of those lipid varieties are important to sustaining the pores and skin barrier, locking in moisture and defending in opposition to harm. These findings counsel that C. acnes performs a particular function within the lipid pores and skin regulation.
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We discovered that C. acnes induced this enhance in lipid manufacturing by producing a kind of short-chain fatty acid referred to as propionic acid. Propionic acid creates an acidic pores and skin surroundings that gives a number of advantages, together with limiting pathogen development, decreasing staph infections and contributing to anti-inflammatory results within the intestine.
We additionally recognized the particular gene and receptor that regulate lipid synthesis via C. acnes. Blocking these parts additionally blocked C. acnes-induced lipid synthesis.
In all, our findings spotlight the substantial function {that a} frequent pores and skin bacterium and its chemical byproducts play in shaping the composition of pores and skin lipids.
Reinforcing the pores and skin barrier
Our analysis means that propionic acid from C. acnes has a number of advantageous results on the pores and skin barrier. For instance, by rising the lipid content material in pores and skin cells, propionic acid lowered water loss via the pores and skin.
We additionally discovered that the lipids pores and skin cells produce after publicity to C. acnes or propionic acid have antimicrobial results in opposition to C. acnes. This means that the lipids C. acnes helps produce have a twin function: They not solely management the presence of C. acnes on the pores and skin but additionally contribute to the general stability of the pores and skin microbiome so one species of microbe would not dominate the remainder.
In the complicated interaction between the pores and skin and its microbial inhabitants, the ever present C. acnes is rising as an necessary participant. Further analysis to higher perceive the pores and skin microbiome could assist result in new therapies for pores and skin situations.
Samia Almoughrabie, Postdoctoral Researcher in Dermatology, University of California, San Diego
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