How does our skin protect us?
Most people are familiar with the skin barrier on their palms or feet, especially when climbing or playing football. But you have that barrier all around your body so for example also behind the ear.
The main function of the skin barrier is to keep everything that is inside in and everything that is outside out. So it keeps the water in our body while protecting us from bacteria or poisons in our environment. This barrier is destroyed in some diseases like atopic eczema, so to help the babies and young children, that suffer from this disease we have to first better understand the skin barrier to repair it.
This skin barrier was imagined like a rigid wall, but during my PhD I could actually show that the skin barrier has a surprising amount of more dynamic molecules, which is necessary for the skin to be elastic and not break when you for example hit yourself and that these dynamic molecules are missing for patients with atopic eczema.
Contact
Division of Physical Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry
Lund University
