Introduction
This study is to characterize the skin microbiome in pilosebaceous units (hair follicles) to understand the role of the skin microbiota in health and disease and its association with a common skin disease, acne vulgaris.
Acne vulgaris, commonly called acne, affects 50 million Americans and many more individuals globally. More than 80 % of the population suffers from acne at some point in their life. The disease can be very painful and profoundly affects patients’ self-esteem, especially in adolescent population. Although its etiology still needs to be defined, the presence of Propionibacterium acnes in the pilosebaceous unit is a key factor. However, P. acnes is a common skin commensal and has not been considered pathogenic by normal standards (Burkhart et al. 1999). Nevertheless, antibiotic therapy targeting P. acnes has been a mainstay treatment for more than 30 years (Leyden 2001), and the reduction in numbers of P. acnesis a widely used parameter of therapeutic...
References
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Li, H. (2013). Metagenomic Study, Human Skin Microbiome Associated with Acne, Project. In: Nelson, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_532-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_532-4
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