Scratch the surface of the skin, and you\u2019ll find a bustling community of bacteria living there. This is a good thing, as research increasingly shows that having the \u201cright kind\u201d of microbes can help keep our skin young, supple, and smooth for longer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Simply by being there, \u201cgood bacteria\u201d protect us from infection from pathogenic, harmful microbes. They also help to repair wounds and may even counteract some of the harmful effects of UV rays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All-the-more reason to look after our skin microbiome. But how do we do this? One method that has become increasingly popular is the use of topical skin probiotics \u2013 which technically means applying live microorganisms to the skin to improve its health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As far back as 1912, scientists were rubbing bacteria into people\u2019s faces in an attempt to improve conditions such as acne and seborrhea \u2013 a common form of dermatitis that causes a red, itchy rash and white or yellow scales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today there are dozens of skincare companies selling what they describe as probiotic products, from serums to cleansers and moisturisers. In each case, the balms offer to rebalance the delicate skin microbiome, leaving it \u201crenewed\u201d and \u201crefreshed\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But while skincare products often claim to be \u201cprobiotic\u201d, very few, if any, actually contain live bacteria. What\u2019s more, as probiotic skin treatments are classed as \u201ccosmetics\u201d and not medicines, their manufacturers don\u2019t have to share the results of any trials that have been conducted on their products, so it\u2019s difficult to know how effective they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe rules around skin care products are very different to the rules around drugs, so claims can be made with less rigorous testing than would be made for a pharmaceutical agent,\u201d says Richard Gallo, a dermatologist at UC San Diego School of Medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most \u201cprobiotic\u201d skincare products contain either prebiotics \u2013 nutrients that feed and encourage the growth of good bacteria on the skin, or postbiotics \u2013 proteins or other products made by beneficial bacteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat we are seeing more and more are approaches that try to influence the microbiome,\u201d says Bernhard Paetzold, co-founder and chief scientific officer of S-Biomedic, a company that aims to treat conditions by restoring the skin\u2019s microbiome through bacterial \u201ctransplants\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Paetzold, the main reason for this is that live bacteria are extremely difficult to keep alive throughout the manufacturing, storing and distribution process. Once on the skin there\u2019s no guarantee that they\u2019ll even take hold, as they must fight to compete with the millions of other microbes already living there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The idea of promoting a healthy skin microbiome is rooted in the theory that bacteria and fungi living on the outside of our body help to protect us from those that might do us harm.
Yet the science behind how certain \u201cbad\u201d bacteria can contribute to skin diseases isn\u2019t yet fully understood. What we do know is that people with eczema, rosacea, acne and psoriasis all have different types or levels of certain bacteria living on their skin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat exists at the moment is a lot of papers showing that nearly every skin disease imaginable is associated with a shift in the skin microbiome,\u201d says Paetzold. \u201cBut this observation just shows an association. It doesn\u2019t say that the shift in the microbiome causes that disease. It could also be that the disease changes the skin environment, and that\u2019s why the bacterial population changes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To prove that a particular strain of bacteria is causing a disease, you would need to either give a healthy person that skin disease by slathering the \u201cbad bacteria\u201d on their face, or cure their disease by applying \u201cgood\u201d bacteria. While the first option is likely to encounter ethical barriers, there are a few researchers attempting the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The limited clinical trials that have been published, however, do show promising results. Most focus on using live bacteria to treat eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis. They are based on the findings that the skin of people with eczema is dominated by Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that can often be pathogenic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the big problems in the skin for diseases like eczema, is that certain pathogenic bacteria like S. aureus live on the surface of the skin and cause rashes, cause disease, and cause infection,\u201d says Gallo, whose own research group has been searching for ways of harnessing the skin microbiome to fight off the harmful bacteria found thriving on eczema patients. \u201cWe mined the bacteria types that usually live on healthy skin looking for bacteria that could produce things that would fight off those bad bacteria\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gallo\u2019s are focusing on Staphylococcus hominis, a naturally occurring skin bacterium which is present in 21% of healthy people, but only 1% of atopic dermatitis patients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur skin provides commensal bacteria like S. hominis with a safe place to live, so some of them have evolved a way of protecting their environment from these bad bacteria that are trying to invade,\u201d says Gallo. (BBC)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Scratch the surface of the skin, and you\u2019ll find a bustling community of bacteria living there. This is a good thing, as research increasingly shows that having the \u201cright kind\u201d of microbes can help keep our skin young, supple, and smooth for longer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":479383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[688],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-479376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-infotainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=479376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/479376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/479383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=479376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=479376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nagalandpost.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=479376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}