Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2011 Jul;11(5):839-48.
doi: 10.1016/j.meegid.2011.03.022. Epub 2011 Apr 2.

Skin microbiota: microbial community structure and its potential association with health and disease

Mariana Rosenthal  1 , Deborah Goldberg, Allison Aiello, Elaine Larson, Betsy Foxman
Affiliations
Review

Skin microbiota: microbial community structure and its potential association with health and disease

Mariana Rosenthal et al. Infect Genet Evol. 2011 Jul.

Abstract

Skin, the largest human organ, is a complex and dynamic ecosystem inhabited by a multitude of microorganisms. Host demographics and genetics, human behavior, local and regional environmental characteristics, and transmission events may all potentially drive human skin microbiota variability, resulting in an alteration of microbial community structure. This alteration may have important consequences regarding health and disease outcomes among individuals. More specifically, certain diversity patterns of human microbiota may be predictive or diagnostic of disease. The purpose of this review is to briefly describe the skin microbiota, outline the potential determining factors driving its variability, posit the likelihood of an association between the resulting microbial community structure on the skin with disease outcomes among individuals, and finally, to present some challenges and implications for studying the skin microbiota.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: None declared.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Conceptual framework of the driving forces behind the relationship between microbial species diversity / community structure of the human microbiota and health outcomes. Specific examples are shown as bullet points within each factor.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic representations of the potential temporal variability of the human skin microbiome.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Aiello AE, Cimiotti J, Della-Latta P, Larson EL. A comparison of the bacteria found on the hands of ‘homemakers’ and neonatal intensive care unit nurses. J Hosp Infect. 2003;54(4):310–315. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Aiello AE, Coulborn RM, Perez V, Larson EL. Effect of hand hygiene on infectious disease risk in the community setting: a meta-analysis. Am J Public Health. 2008;98(8):1372–81. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Allegranzi B, Pittet D. Role of hand hygiene in healthcare-associated infection prevention. Hosp Infect. 2009;73:305–315. - PubMed
    1. Bek-Thomsen M, Lomholt HB, Kilian M. Acne is Not Associated with Yet-Uncultured Bacteria. J Clin Microbiol. 2008;46(10):3355–3360. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Benson AK, Kelly SA, Legge R, Ma F, Low SJ, Kim J, Zhang M, Oh PL, Nehrenberg D, Hua K, Kachman SD, Moriyama EN, Walter J, Peterson DA, Pomp D. Individuality in gut microbiota composition is a complex polygenic trait shaped by multiple environmental and host genetic factors. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2010;107(44):18933–8. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources