In 2019, Professor Elisabeth Grice and her team at the University of Pennsylvania made the interesting discovery that a certain type of bacteria is linked to skin rejuvenation . Many of the skin's bacteria are important "factories" that manufacture nutrients, vitamins and lipids that are crucial for our skin's health, and we know that many of these processes decrease as the skin ages.
Professor Grice and team discovered that bacteria linked to younger looking skin contribute to and are important for lipid and ceramide production. Previous studies show that the lipid and ceramide concentration in the skin decreases by up to 30% in the skin during the aging process. Grice's study provides the explanation that the bacteria that help with ceramide production in the skin decrease as we age.
In another recent study from 2022, American and Chinese researchers show that it is the skin bacterium S. epidermidis that produces ceramides in the skin and thus accounts for an important part of the skin's barrier function. The skin barrier is the outermost layer of the skin which is important for keeping out dirt, pollution and bad bacteria and which "locks in" the moisture in the skin and an intact skin barrier is crucial for our skin health. S. epidermidis is a bacterium that we and others are particularly looking at whether it can be added to the skin through skin cream to reduce the rate of the aging process. Grice and his team also saw that there are bacteria that are also responsible for pigmentation, the skin's firmness, elasticity and wrinkle formation.
In another new study, also from 2022, they compared the skin in different age groups, women between 19–28 years and 60–63 years. In the study, it was seen, among other things, that the younger women had more lactobacilli (lactic acid bacteria) in their skin compared to the older women. This is of course interesting in terms of probiotics in skin care, as lactic acid bacteria is something we can include in skin care.
Researchers are currently studying whether the bacteria that we have more of when we are young can be added to counteract and slow down skin aging. We already know that our skin microbiome is incredibly important to our skin health as a whole, but it is very interesting that more scientific studies are now also focusing on understanding the link between skin aging and our microbiome.
