Acne

[hannia19]

What is the connection between acne and bacteria ? How or why does sebum starts to create commensal organisms ?

[deleted-140078]

Connections with bacteria. My friend we are very, very connected with bacteria in many ways. We have it on us, in us, and around us. But to answer your question specifically lets talk about sebum and what exactly it is there for, and what it does.

Sebum is produced by sebaceous glands, these glands are on pretty much every surface of our skin. The sebum is a waxy, oily, fat and vitamin containing substance that is either expressed through hair follicles or into sweat pores. The sebum has a great many purposes through out the body. There are specialized types for specific organs (such as the eyes, and ears) but the bulk of it is utilized by the skin and hair.

We are made of mostly water. In fact, if we overnight lost all of our skin, aside from the massive infection we would probably get because our insides were now exposed to the outside, we would become massively dehydrated. It is important to keep an intact barrier that essentially prevents us from being evaporated off. The problem is that skin is mostly water too. The sebum’s fat content prevents fluid loss by evaporation, and also protects us from liquids that we are exposed to. In addition it carries nutrients to the outer skin layers, and also help preserve hair in a similar way.

How does this relate to acne? Acne is caused by a plug of sebum backing up a sebaceous gland or duct. In this sebum is the bacteria that is primarily responsible for acne. It normally gets expelled from the body, and nothing else really happens. But when the bacterias exit route gets plugged, it continues to reside, and multiply, right where it is. Since sebum is mostly nutrient packed fat, this provides an excellent energy source for the bacteria. The bacteria, like you said is commensal, but it’s not necessarily created by the sebum, it is just there, but normally doesn’t cause any problems. There are a great many bacteria that are commensal with humans.

Please write back if you have any questions.

Mark


[SciB]

Hi Hannia,

What sort of project did you have in mind about acne bacteria? Are you interested in how bacteria cause the infections, which over-the-counter medications work best, whether face scrubbers are effective, whether certain foods cause acne flare-ups, etc.?

There are a lot of possible ways to go with this project, so what interests you most? Just remember that working with bacteria, especially ones that can infect humans, requires special precautions and often experiments must be done in a microbiology lab. Check out the Scibuddies project, "Which Acne Medication can Really Zap that Zit?" https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p019.shtml

Please repost with a description of what you would like to do and your hypothesis and we can help you designing experiments that are doable within your budget and resources.

Best wishes,

Scibee

[hannia19]

Hi Scibee ,
I am trying to find which over the counter medications is more efficient .

[deleted-132180]

Hi Hannia,

Really cool project idea! Have you decided which strains of bacteria to test yet? Are you planning to acquire, culture, and use bacteria that actually cause acne in your experiments? For example, are you planning to just treat a widely-used model bacterium like E. coli with different over-the-counter medications and assess how well these medications kill E. coli, or are you planning to do it with bacteria that are associated with causing acne, such as Propionibacterium acnes? Of course, like SciB mentioned, make sure you do a bit of research on the bacterial strains that you intend to use to see what the safety precautions are and what materials are required to actually culture them.

Like Mark had mentioned to you briefly, many commensal bacteria actually reside on different parts of our body. In fact, our body actually contains more bacterial cells than human cells (we have about 10 trillion human cells, whereas we harbor about 100 trillion bacteria)! These normally harmless, commensal bacteria help keep our bodies healthy in many ways: For example, they can help prevent pathogens from colonizing our body and causing disease. Our skin is FULL of bacteria, and P. acnes is actually a member of our normal skin bacterial community. I had just found a pretty interesting article on P. acnes where researchers have shown that different strains of P. acnes can reside within our nasal pores (http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... e-bacteria). They've analyzed the prevalence of the 10 most commonly found strains and discovered that some of those strains are strongly associated with unhealthy skin, whereas some strains are only found on people with healthy skin. This may actually be way beyond the scope of what you plan to do, and vendors likely won't mention whether the strain of P. acnes they sell is associated with healthy skin or unhealthy skin, but wouldn't it be cool if you can test the medications on a strain of P. acnes associated with healthy skin, and another strain of P. acnes associated with unhealthy skin and see whether the drugs kill these strains to the same extent? This may have really important implications on how we actually treat acne conditions because if we kill off the strains that are keeping our skin healthy along with the strains that are causing the acne, wouldn't that potentially make our skin more susceptible to infection? Again, this is probably beyond the scope of your project, but I think it's a good thing to keep in mind that as the scientific community learns more about our normal commensal bacteria and how they benefit our health, it will also be important to develop drugs that exclusively target disease-causing bacteria without affecting our commensals!

I hope this helped, and I hope I've also given you more perspective on our normal commensals and their benefits to us! Let us know if you have anymore questions.

Best of luck,
Connie

[hannia19]

Hi Connie ,
Thank you for your idea ! I actually did more research on it , and it is very interesting. Now the problem is I can't test on human skin , is there any other alternative for skin that I can use to test on but that will give me the same results ?
Please let me know.

Thank you ,
Hannia

[deleted-143835]

Hi Hannia,

As far as I understand, acne is a bacterial phenomenon, not a problem with the skin itself. I'd therefore suggest culturing a strain of bacteria known to cause acne externally (as in, not within a human skin/human cell environment) and test using these cultures.

Hope this helps!

[deleted-132180]

Hi Hannia,

Could you give a little more information on what new ideas you're trying to test, and also what types of resources are available to you? It would make it a lot easier for me to address your questions with the appropriate answer!

Connie

[hannia19]

Hello Connie,

I have to test P.acnes on healthy skin and unhealthy skin and she if the medications kill them to the same extend. I am looking for a mentor , I am in a ROP Biological Sciences Laboratory Reasearch class so i do have some resources to use. Please let me know if this helped at all , or if you need more information.

Thank you ,
Hannia

[hannia19]

I am working with P.acnes but it is an anearobic bacteria . What can build or do so that I can work with it and it wont die . Help please !
Thank you,
Hannia

[deleted-140482]

As you no doubt know, anaerobic bacteria do not require oxygen to grow, but luckily for you that does not necessarily mean that oxygen is harmful to them. I believe P. acne is considered an aerotolerant anaerobe, so the presence of oxygen will not harm it, it just won't help it. This means you don't need to develop a special "oxygen-free" growth system. You will need an incubator that can keep the bacteria at 37 degrees Celsius. Since P. acne is a relatively slow growing bacteria, you likely wouldn't be able to see significant growth at a lower temperature. For more details on P. acne growth, I am attaching a paper that discusses ideal growth conditions for the bacteria. I also recommend you look at the following Ask an Expert conversation which also discusses P. acne and how to use it in an experiment. https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =28&t=7008


Hope this helps!
JMP

[deleted-132180]

Hi Hannia,

What do you mean by, "I have to test P. acnes on healthy skin and unhealthy skin and she if the medications kill them to the same extend"? Are you going to find patients with healthy skin versus patients with acne, test the medications, and see whether P. acnes are killed with the medications? It would be a bit difficult to work with actual patients. Have you considered just treating pure cultures of P. acnes with different types of medication to see which medications are more effective at killing them? Are you going to be working with a lab that does work with P. acnes?

Connie

[hannia19]

Hello ,

After talking with others and getting ideas I decided to come up with my own natural resource medication and I will be testing it on P.acnes but I need a qualified scientist for this and I can't find one. Can anybody help? Is there any microbiologist that can work with me using P.acnes in the bay area ? Help !

[deleted-71536]

Hi Hannia,

Here is some information about how to go about finding a mentor: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... tors.shtml

There are plenty of universities and community colleges in the Bay Area where you could potentially find a mentor. Keep in mind that your mentor does not necessarily have to work on P. acnes to be able to help. Someone who does microbiology and regularly cultures bacteria should be able to serve as a good mentor for your project.

Good luck!

Heather