Poroelastic behavior and water permeability of human skin at the nanoscale
Author(s)
Oftadeh, Ramin
Azadi, Mojtaba
Donovan, Mark
Langer, Jessica
Liao, I-Chien
Ortiz, Christine
Grodzinsky, Alan J
Luengo, Gustavo S
Date Issued
August 1, 2023
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Ramin Oftadeh, Mojtaba Azadi, Mark Donovan, Jessica Langer, I-Chien Liao, Christine Ortiz, Alan J Grodzinsky, Gustavo S Luengo, Poroelastic behavior and water permeability of human skin at the nanoscale, PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 8, August 2023, pgad240.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Topical skin care products and hydrating compositions (moisturizers or injectable fillers) have been used for years to improve the appearance of, for example facial wrinkles, or to increase “plumpness”. Most of the studies have addressed these changes based on the overall mechanical changes associated with an increase in hydration state. However, little is known about the water mobility contribution to these changes as well as the consequences to the specific skin layers. This is important as the biophysical properties and the biochemical composition of normal stratum corneum, epithelium, and dermis vary tremendously from one another.
Our current studies and results reported here have focused on a novel approach (dynamic atomic force microscopy-based nanoindentation) to quantify biophysical characteristics of individual layers of ex vivo human skin. We have discovered that our new methods are highly sensitive to the mechanical properties of individual skin layers, as well as their hydration properties. Furthermore, our methods can assess the ability of these individual layers to respond to both compressive and shear deformations. In addition, since human skin is mechanically loaded over a wide range of deformation rates (frequencies), we studied the biophysical properties of skin over a wide frequency range. The poroelasticity model used helps to quantify the hydraulic permeability of the skin layers, providing an innovative method to evaluate and interpret the impact of hydrating compositions on water mobility of these different skin layers.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad240
