Martin Patrick Pagac*, Martin Stalder and Remo Campiche DSM-Firmenich, Perfumery and Beauty, Kaiseraugst, Switzerland

EDITED BY

Franck Carbonero, Washington State University Health Sciences Spokane, United States

REVIEWED BY

Audrey Gueniche, Loreal Research and Innovation, France Janeta Nikolovski, Independent Researcher, Princeton, United States

*CORRESPONDENCE

Martin Patrick Pagac, 该Email地址已收到反垃圾邮件插件保护。要显示它您需要在浏览器中启用JavaScript。

RECEIVED 09 December 2023

ACCEPTED 15 February 2024

PUBLISHED 21 March 2024

CITATION

Pagac MP, Stalder M and Campiche R (2024), Menopause and facial skin microbiomes: a pilot study revealing novel insights into their relationship. Front. Aging 5:1353082.

doi: 10.3389/fragi.2024.1353082

COPYRIGHT

© 2024 Pagac, Stalder and Campiche. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Introduction: The human skin microbial composition is affected by age. Previous studies reported skin microbiome diversity shifts between elderly and significantly younger subjects. Some studies implied that menopausal status, which is inherently linked to age, could be associated with changes in skin microbial compositions. Nevertheless, the influence of menopausal status on skin microbiome profiles while minimizing the impact of aging-associated changes in skin parameters still needs further clarification.

Methods: We performed an observational study on healthy Caucasian female volunteers, which were grouped according to their pre- or postmenopausal status. Bacterial community structures on facial skin were analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Cutometer® measurements were performed to evaluate aging-associated changes in facial skin biophysical properties.

Results: The relative abundance of the lipophilic Cutibacterium genus was decreased, and bacterial diversity was increased in skin samples of postmenopausal volunteers. The mean age difference between examined groups in this study was 12.4 years only. Accordingly, Cutometer ® measurements revealed no differences in aging-associated skin biophysical parameters between pre- and postmenopausal groups. Consequently, no correlation was detected between Shannon diversity and measured agedependent biomechanical properties of facial skin.

Discussion: These findings are in line with previous studies, which investigated the wide-ranging impact of chronological aging on skin microbial communities. However, this work reports for the first time a direct association between menopausal status and facial microbiomes on skin of similarly aged study participants, and hence uncouples aging-associated skin biophysical parameters, such as viscoelastic properties, from the equation. These findings open avenues for the development of microbiome-targeting strategies for treatment of menopause-associated skin disorders.

KEYWORDS menopause, aging, skin, microbiome, bacterial diversity, Cutibacterium