scholarly journals Extrinsic Factors Shaping the Skin Microbiome

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (7) ◽  
pp. 1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veronica Moskovicz ◽  
Adi Gross ◽  
Boaz Mizrahi

Human skin, our most environmentally exposed organ, is colonized by a vast array of microorganisms constituting its microbiome. These bacterial communities are crucial for the fulfillment of human physiological functions such as immune system modulation and epidermal development and differentiation. The structure of the human skin microbiome is established during the early life stages, starting even before birth, and continues to be modulated throughout the entire life cycle, by multiple host-related and environmental factors. This review focuses on extrinsic factors, ranging from cosmetics to the environment and antibacterial agents, as forces that impact the human skin microbiome and well-being. Assessing the impact of these factors on the skin microbiome will help elucidate the forces that shape the microbial populations we coexist with. Furthermore, we will gain additional insight into their tendency to stimulate a healthy environment or to increase the propensity for skin disorder development.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 543
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Skowron ◽  
Justyna Bauza-Kaszewska ◽  
Zuzanna Kraszewska ◽  
Natalia Wiktorczyk-Kapischke ◽  
Katarzyna Grudlewska-Buda ◽  
...  

The skin is the largest organ of the human body and it protects the body from the external environment. It has become the topic of interest of researchers from various scientific fields. Microorganisms ensure the proper functioning of the skin. Of great importance, are the mutual relations between such microorganisms and their responses to environmental impacts, as dysbiosis may contribute to serious skin diseases. Molecular methods, used for microorganism identification, allow us to gain a better understanding of the skin microbiome. The presented article contains the latest reports on the skin microbiota in health and disease. The review discusses the relationship between a properly functioning microbiome and the body’s immune system, as well as the impact of internal and external factors on the human skin microbiome.


BMC Medicine ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bimandra A. Djaafara ◽  
Charles Whittaker ◽  
Oliver J. Watson ◽  
Robert Verity ◽  
Nicholas F. Brazeau ◽  
...  

Abstract Background As in many countries, quantifying COVID-19 spread in Indonesia remains challenging due to testing limitations. In Java, non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) were implemented throughout 2020. However, as a vaccination campaign launches, cases and deaths are rising across the island. Methods We used modelling to explore the extent to which data on burials in Jakarta using strict COVID-19 protocols (C19P) provide additional insight into the transmissibility of the disease, epidemic trajectory, and the impact of NPIs. We assess how implementation of NPIs in early 2021 will shape the epidemic during the period of likely vaccine rollout. Results C19P burial data in Jakarta suggest a death toll approximately 3.3 times higher than reported. Transmission estimates using these data suggest earlier, larger, and more sustained impact of NPIs. Measures to reduce sub-national spread, particularly during Ramadan, substantially mitigated spread to more vulnerable rural areas. Given current trajectory, daily cases and deaths are likely to increase in most regions as the vaccine is rolled out. Transmission may peak in early 2021 in Jakarta if current levels of control are maintained. However, relaxation of control measures is likely to lead to a subsequent resurgence in the absence of an effective vaccination campaign. Conclusions Syndromic measures of mortality provide a more complete picture of COVID-19 severity upon which to base decision-making. The high potential impact of the vaccine in Java is attributable to reductions in transmission to date and dependent on these being maintained. Increases in control in the relatively short-term will likely yield large, synergistic increases in vaccine impact.


2005 ◽  
Vol 37 (5) ◽  
pp. 895-907 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ari Goelman

My research explores the question: how can theorists better understand the ways in which planning technologies are used by municipal planners? In the case-study municipality, a recently introduced web-GIS technology had little demonstrable success in attaining two of its stated goals: enabling increased public access to municipal geographic information and encouraging planners to produce their own maps. My research links these outcomes not only to the technologies themselves, but to organizational structure and human agency. Planners and planning theorists can gain additional insight into the impact of planning technologies through closer attention to the process through which planners come to use information technologies and the way this process both alters and is constrained by existing organizational constraints, including previously adopted technologies.


2015 ◽  
Vol 130 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
S Degeest ◽  
P Corthals ◽  
I Dhooge ◽  
H Keppler

AbstractObjective:This study aimed to determine the characteristics of tinnitus and tinnitus-related variables and explore their possible relationship with tinnitus-related handicap.Methods:Eighty-one patients with chronic tinnitus were included. The study protocol measured hearing status, tinnitus pitch, loudness, maskability and loudness discomfort levels. All patients filled in the Tinnitus Sample Case History Questionnaire, the Hyperacusis Questionnaire and the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory. The relationship of each variable with the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score was evaluated by univariate and multivariate analyses.Results:Five univariables were associated with the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score: loudness discomfort level, subjective tinnitus loudness, tinnitus awareness, noise intolerance and Hyperacusis Questionnaire score. Multiple regression analysis showed that the Hyperacusis Questionnaire score and tinnitus awareness were independently associated with the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score.Conclusion:Hyperacusis and tinnitus awareness were independently associated with the Tinnitus Handicap Inventory score. Questionnaires on tinnitus and hyperacusis are especially suited to providing additional insight into tinnitus-related handicap and are therefore useful for evaluating tinnitus patients.


2011 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karin Tanja-Dijkstra

Objective: This paper presents a study to gain insight into the effects of the visibility of medical equipment on the well-being of patients. Background: Encounters with healthcare situations are characterized by stress and anxiety. The presence of wires, tubes, and monitors near the bedside may contribute to these feelings. One of the trends in healthcare design is to organize the headwalls of patient rooms in such a way as to reduce clutter and minimize the visibility of medical equipment, but no experimental studies are available that investigate the effects of the visibility of medical equipment in patient rooms. Methods: This experiment employed a single-factor between-subjects design (medical equipment visible vs. medical equipment out of sight) exposing participants ( n = 42) to a scenario and a picture of a hospital room. Results: Placing medical equipment out of sight leads to reduced feelings of stress in patients. This stress-reducing effect is mediated by feelings of pleasure. Placing medical equipment out of sight leads to a more positive emotional state, which in turn leads to feelings of reduced stress in patients. Moreover, placing equipment out of sight leads to people having more trust in the healthcare provider. Conclusions: The current study emphasizes the importance of the built healthcare environment and shows what role the visibility of medical equipment can play in the healing process of patients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristin H Loomis ◽  
Susan K Wu ◽  
Amanda Ernlund ◽  
Kristina Zudock ◽  
Allison Reno ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Skin, the largest organ of the human body by weight, hosts a diversity of microorganisms that can influence health. The microbial residents of the skin are now appreciated for their roles in host immune interactions, wound healing, colonization resistance, and various skin disorders. Still, much remains to be discovered in terms of the host pathways influenced by skin microorganisms, as well as the higher-level skin properties impacted through these microbe-host interactions. Towards this direction, recent efforts using mouse models pointed to pronounced changes in the transcriptional profiles of the skin in response to the presence of a microbial community. However, there is a need to quantify the roles of microorganisms at both the individual and community-level in healthy human skin. In this study, we utilize human skin equivalents to study the effects of individual taxa and a microbial community in a precisely controlled context. Through transcriptomics analysis, we identify key genes and pathways influenced by skin microbes, and we also characterize higher-level impacts on skin processes and properties through histological analyses. Results The presence of a microbiome on a 3D skin tissue model led to significantly altered patterns of gene expression, influencing genes involved in the regulation of apoptosis, proliferation, and the extracellular matrix (among others). Moreover, microbiome treatment influenced the thickness of the epidermal layer, reduced the number of actively proliferating cells, and increased filaggrin expression. Many of these findings were evident upon treatment with the mixed community, but either not detected or less pronounced in treatments by single microorganisms, underscoring the impact that a diverse skin microbiome has on the host. Conclusions This work contributes to the understanding of how microbiome constituents individually and collectively influence human skin processes and properties. The results show that, while it is important to understand the effect of individual microbes on the host, a full community of microbes has unique and pronounced effects on the skin. Thus, in its impacts on the host, the skin microbiome is more than the sum of its parts.


Author(s):  
Sharra L. Vostral

Abstract Vostral provides much-needed insight into the link between women’s bodily experiences with tampons and twentieth-century developments in material science, corporate research, and gynecological observations about menstrual cycles. She examines how design modifications to tampons, changes in material composition, and the cultivation of women test subjects exposed scientific assumptions, ideas about safety, and attitudes concerning gendered and menstruating bodies. Focusing on the practical work of tampon testing, Vostral examines the impact of broad cultural conditions: prevailing ideas about women’s bodies, gender differences, and the role of science and medicine in optimizing well-being. Finally, she shows how patterns of social power and privilege configured this research, with evidence taking different forms over time.


Author(s):  
Felicity Thomas ◽  
Nils Fietje

This chapter examines how a greater awareness of people’s lived experience can shape a more robust well-being narrative that offers policymakers greater insight into what matters to the good life of their rich and varied publics. Recent years have seen a number of initiatives and publications emerge to support a new kind of narrative on well-being. Among the most influential is a call for “fifth wave” thinking, which recognizes that existing, individually-focused, and biomedical approaches to health and well-being are no longer amenable to challenges of the current era, and a radically new approach that focuses on “a culture for health” and that seeks to engage with the full complexity of subjective, lived experience is needed to address contemporary problems, such as social inequality and loss of well-being. Narrative research methods can provide insight into people’s understandings of well-being, and their health and well-being-related experiences and lifestyle choices can locate this within their broader socio-cultural and historical context. The chapter then discusses the need to move away from individualized formulations of well-being, to approaches that recognize the value of relational well-being. It also considers assets-based approaches; the impact of social media on well-being narrative; and the establishment of accountability for well-being actions and narratives.


Microbiome ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manon Boxberger ◽  
Valérie Cenizo ◽  
Nadim Cassir ◽  
Bernard La Scola

AbstractThe skin is the exterior interface of the human body with the environment. Despite its harsh physical landscape, the skin is colonized by diverse commensal microbes. In this review, we discuss recent insights into skin microbial populations, including their composition and role in health and disease and their modulation by intrinsic and extrinsic factors, with a focus on the pathobiological basis of skin aging. We also describe the most recent tools for investigating the skin microbiota composition and microbe-skin relationships and perspectives regarding the challenges of skin microbiome manipulation.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0258960
Author(s):  
Wynand Alkema ◽  
Jos Boekhorst ◽  
Robyn T. Eijlander ◽  
Steve Schnittger ◽  
Fini De Gruyter ◽  
...  

During aging of human skin, a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors cause the alteration of the skin’s structure, function and cutaneous physiology. Many studies have investigated the influence of the skin microbiome on these alterations, but the molecular mechanisms that dictate the interplay between these factors and the skin microbiome are still not fully understood. To obtain more insight into the connection between the skin microbiome and the human physiological processes involved in skin aging, we performed a systematic study on interconnected pathways of human and bacterial metabolic processes that are known to play a role in skin aging. The bacterial genes in these pathways were subsequently used to create Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), which were applied to screen for presence of defined functionalities in both genomic and metagenomic datasets of skin-associated bacteria. These models were further applied on 16S rRNA gene sequencing data from skin microbiota samples derived from female volunteers of two different age groups (25–28 years (‘young’) and 59–68 years (‘old’)). The results show that the main bacterial pathways associated with aging skin are those involved in the production of pigmentation intermediates, fatty acids and ceramides. This study furthermore provides evidence for a relation between skin aging and bacterial enzymes involved in protein glycation. Taken together, the results and insights described in this paper provide new leads for intervening with bacterial processes that are associated with aging of human skin.


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