Synthetic lipids called pseudoceramides may help eczema and psoriasis sufferers. This new substance is involved in skin cell growth and could be used in treating skin diseases in which skin cells grow abnormally.
Ceramides are lipids found in the outermost skin layer called the stratum corneum, which is made of dead skin cells and mainly serves as a physical barrier. Ceramides' main biological function is to control how skin cells grow and differentiate a process through which skin cells become specialized.
Lab-created synthetic ceramides, called pseudoceramides, may be used to treat skin diseases such as atopic dermatitis, a form of eczema characterized by red, flaky and very itchy skin; psoriasis, a disease that causes red scaly patches on the skin; and glucocorticoid-induced epidermal atrophy, in which the skin shrinks due to skin cell loss.
Jeung-Hoon Lee and colleagues from Department of Dermatology and Research Institute for Medical Sciences, School of Medicine, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Korea, Â found that three pseudoceramides called K6PC-4, K6PC-5, and K6PC-9 significantly increased the amount of proteins produced when skin cells differentiate. These results were obtained both on cultured skin cells and on a reconstituted epidermis.
This means that pseudoceramides may be used to treat skin diseases arising from abnormal growth of skin cells, the scientists concluded.
They say that beauty doesn't come in a bottle, but it surely does come in a lab tube.
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