Washington
In one early test, those customized creams guarded five patients with a kind of itchy eczema against risky bacteria that were gathering on their cracked skin, researchers reported on Wednesday.
“It’s boosting the body’s overall immune defenses,” said Dr. Richard Gallo, dermatology chairman at the University of California, San Diego, who is leading the work.
We share our bodies with trillions of microbes that live on our skin, in our noses, in the gut. This community — what scientists call the microbiome — plays critical roles in whether we stay healthy or become more vulnerable to various diseases. Learning what makes a healthy microbiome is a huge field of research, and already scientists are altering gut bacteria to fight diarrhea-causing infections.
Wednesday’s research sheds new light on the skin’s microbiome — suggesting that one day it may be possible to restore the right balance of good bugs to treat skin disorders, too.
Healthy skin harbors a different mix of bacteria than skin damaged by disorders such as atopic dermatitis, the most common form of eczema. Those patches of dry, red, itchy skin are at increased risk of infections, particularly from a worrisome germ known as Staphylococcus aureus.
Gallo’s team took a closer look at how microbes in healthy skin might be keeping that bad staph in check.
They discovered certain strains of some protective bacteria secrete two “antimicrobial peptides,” a type of natural antibiotic.
In lab tests and on the surface of animal skin, those substances could selectively kill Staph aureus, and even a drug-resistant strain known as MRSA, without killing neighboring bacteria like regular antibiotics do, the team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
But those good bugs are rare in the skin of people with atopic dermatitis, Gallo said.