TESTING 41


Efficacy testing of microbiome skin care


 Christiane Uhl – Courage + Khazaka, Germany


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 1- 3 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


April 2019 Figure 1: Skin is a natural habitat for a rich variety of microorganisms.


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, tape- stripping, 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


PERSONAL CARE EUROPE


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188