fficacy Testing Of Microbiome Skin Care



For years now, we have accepted the idea that we can nourish our intestinal tract with dedicated bacterial ingredients from food supplements and thereby improve our general health.


Books written on this subject have become bestsellers. But why should we focus only on our intestinal tract? 


There are so many different microbial communities that can be found on and inside our body. Especially the colonisation of the skin being our largest organ, tangible to the hands, visible to the eye, and in constant contact with the outside environment has moved to the front of cosmetic research. The idea of being a complex ecosystem is adding to the existing trend of personalised cosmetics, and will confirm the customer in their feeling of uniqueness. 


The human microbiome is the collection of all microorganisms associated with the human body. It consists of a wide variety of microscopic life forms, including eukaryotes, archaea, bacteria and viruses. The count of microorganism cells in an average human body is at least as high as the amount of human cells. The reported ratio varies, depending on the scientific sources1,2,3 


“Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1-3 percent of the body mass,” amounting to 13 kilograms in a 100 kg adult.4 These microbes are generally not harmful to us. In fact, they have turned out to be essential for maintaining health. We need them for breaking down and digesting food and extracting nutrients indispensable for survival and wellbeing. They also support our organism to produce all the vitamins that we need.5 Recent studies have even shown that they teach the immune system how to recognise dangerous invaders and produce helpful anti-inflammatory compounds that fight off disease-causing microbes.6


Even though bacteria represent the highest number of all life forms on earth, we only learnt about them in the past approximately 350 years. The development of microscopes made them visible to the eye. Only about 150 years ago, the subject of medical microbiology was introduced by renowned scientists such as Louis Pasteur, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, Joseph Lister, Friedrich Löffler, Paul Frosch and Robert Koch. 


Traditional microbiology focuses on the study of individual species. They are sampled by biopsy, impression, tapestripping, swabbing or rinsing. After sampling, the retrieved sample is cultured in different conditions according to the microorganism that is researched, sometimes for several days. When the culturing has been successful, and the sampled organisms have sufficiently multiplied for analysis, microscopy and electron microscopy are the most common traditional methods applied for identification. They are combined with numerous detection methods depending on the researched species such as Gram staining and other staining techniques, as well as tests with fluorescent markers or biochemical tests that rely on the reaction of the bacterial enzymes to different reagents. Different testing methods can also be combined in available ready-to-use sets. 


The culturing conditions will determine if an organism will survive and multiply. When the culturing process is stopped, we are looking at isolated bacterial species flourishing under the experimentally-produced conditions, and not at the community of all bacteria that have been originally sampled. Only a small portion of bacteria can be cultured this way. The vast majority has never been successfully cultured.


The Human Microbiome project,7 started in 2008, has driven the development of new analysis techniques, especially advances in DNA sequencing techniques. Instead of looking at isolated species, the newly developed metagenomic methods examine the entire collection of genomes from a microbial community sampled straight out of its natural habitat. There is also no need for time-consuming cultivation promoting growth of only specific organisms. Over the past years, researchers have rapidly developed ever newer and more advanced methods for metagenomic tests that have become relatively easy to use and inexpensive. The calculation of the results is widely automatic. 


The rapid advancement in the development of metagenomic methods has enabled researchers to gain insight into the microbial associations of the skin and their functions. Many publications describe the microbial interaction to create a stable environment and protect their community and thereby also the human body from the invasion of foreign and potentially harmful microbes. Other articles examine the communication of the microbiome with the human immune system. Many studies have proven that there is a close link between skin diseases such as acne and atopic dermatitis and the skin microbiome. Recent research indicates that no presence of a single clearly defined microbial species will turn out beneficial or harmful, but that it is the diversity of the microbiome that is essential for maintaining skin health.8



source from https://www.personalcaremagazine.com