The skin reddens, itches, flakes and weeps: typical signs of atopic eczema, also known as neurodermatitis. Around four million people in Germany are said to be affected by the non-contagious, inflammatory skin disease. Treating and curing it permanently is not easy. But there may be a new approach if you better understand the role of the bacterial flora on the skin. A working group led by Paulo Wender Gomes from the University of California in San Diego therefore compared the microbiome of healthy people with that of people who were affected by the skin change. They published their study in advance on the bioRxiv.
For their study, the team took skin samples from 30 people each, whose microbiome they then analyzed with the help of gene sequencing. In general, half with the atopic eczema showed a reduced bacterial diversity on the skin. Instead, they had significantly higher amounts of both bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis which are natural components of the skin flora, but which can also trigger skin changes such as blisters and other inflammations if they multiply pathologically.
In a second step, the team then used a mass spectrometer to look for molecules on the skin that are involved in inflammatory reactions. Here, too, it was found to an increased extent in those affected by eczema: They had higher concentrations of aspartyl-phenylalanine, leucylproline and N-acetyl-methionine on the skin.
2023-09-01 13:09:28
#Dermatology #skin #flora #influence #formation #eczema
