Skin microbiota: Microbial community structure and its potential association with health and disease

Abstract

Skin, the largest human organ, is a complex and dynamic ecosystem inhabited by a multitude of microorganisms. Host demographics and genetics, human behavior, local and regional environmental characteristics, and transmission events may all potentially drive human skin microbiota variability, resulting in an alteration of microbial community structure. This alteration may have important consequences regarding health and disease outcomes among individuals. More specifically, certain diversity patterns of human microbiota may be predictive or diagnostic of disease. The purpose of this review is to briefly describe the skin microbiota, outline the potential determining factors driving its variability, posit the likelihood of an association between the resulting microbial community structure on the skin with disease outcomes among individuals, and finally, to present some challenges and implications for studying the skin microbiota.

Nasal flora in allergic rhinitis

“…aureus is found in abundance in skin of individuals with atopic eczema. 13 This supports the finding in our study where Staphylococcus aureus is found more in middle meatus in patients with allergic rhinitis than in controls.…”

The Role of Cutaneous Microbiota Harmony in Maintaining a Functional Skin Barrier

“…These factors alter the composition of the skin micro-organism community and may influence skin barrier function by inducing an unbalanced state of dysbiosis that may be evidenced in chronic inflammatory skin diseases, such as atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, rosacea, or acne (7,(11)(12)(13) . Factors involved in the relationship between skin microbiota and the skin barrier function are summarized in Table 1. • • Interplay between Skin Cells and Bacteria in Host Defense and Inflammation…”

The Skin Microbiome in Atopic Dermatitis and Its Relationship to Emollients

“…25 The effectiveness of fecal and earwax transplant suggests that the microbiome plays a clinically meaningful role in the maintenance of health. [24][25][26] In AD-affected skin, there is overrepresentation in nonlesional and even more in lesional areas of Firmicutes, including Staphylococci, and underrepresentation of Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria, and Cyanobacteria. 2 Restoring microbial balance on the skin may be clinically meaningful in inflammatory skin diseases, such as atopic dermatitis.…”