Wallen-Russell, C.; Wallen-Russell, S. A New Benchmark to Determine What Healthy Western Skin Looks Like in Terms of Biodiversity Using Standardised Methodology. Cosmetics, 2020, 7, 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics7040079.
Wallen-Russell, C.; Wallen-Russell, S. A New Benchmark to Determine What Healthy Western Skin Looks Like in Terms of Biodiversity Using Standardised Methodology. Cosmetics, 2020, 7, 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics7040079.
Wallen-Russell, C.; Wallen-Russell, S. A New Benchmark to Determine What Healthy Western Skin Looks Like in Terms of Biodiversity Using Standardised Methodology. Cosmetics, 2020, 7, 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics7040079.
Wallen-Russell, C.; Wallen-Russell, S. A New Benchmark to Determine What Healthy Western Skin Looks Like in Terms of Biodiversity Using Standardised Methodology. Cosmetics, 2020, 7, 79. https://doi.org/10.3390/cosmetics7040079.
Abstract
A catastrophic loss of microbial biodiversity on the skin has led to alarming increase in the prevalence of allergies and long-term damage to the skin, which could also have damaging knock on effects to overall health. This study uses 50 human participants, to obtain an average (benchmark) value for the biodiversity of ‘healthy’ western skin, which is crucial in updating our 2017 skin health measuring mechanism to use standardised methodology. Previous work with a larger sample size was unsatisfactory for use as a benchmark due to its use of different and outdated diversity indices. We also investigated the effect of age and sex, two known skin microbiome affecting factors. Although no statistical significance is seen for age- and sex- related changes in diversity, there appear to be changes related to age which elaborates on previous work which used larger, more general age ranges. Our study indicates adults age 28-37 have highest diversity, and age 48-57 the lowest. Crucially, because of this study we are now able to update the skin health measuring mechanism from our 2017 work. This will aid diagnostic assessment of susceptibility to cutaneous conditions or diseases, and treatment. Testing any human subject will be rapidly improved by obtaining future benchmark diversity values for any age, sex, body site and area of residence, to which they can be compared. This improvement means we can also more accurately investigate the ultimate question: What factors in the western world are a main cause of the skin allergy epidemic? This could lead to future restriction of certain synthetic chemicals or products found to be particularly harmful to the skin.
Biology and Life Sciences, Immunology and Microbiology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
