Conference Contribution Details

 

RE Imhof.
Invited Lecture, 10th Annual Meeting of the Skin Forum & 3rd APGI Skin and Formulation Symposium, Versailles 2009.

 

Summary:-

Skin, air and water are three essential components of any physical model of the skin. In this talk, I will look at the main relevant properties of these components and how they can be used in calculations of skin properties. For skin, you need to take into account its layered structure, layer thickness, permeability and hydration. For air, it is humidity, temperature, flow and turbulence. For water it is diffusion, sorption, desorption and evaporation. In addition, there are inter-dependencies that also need to be taken into account.

However sophisticated, such physical models are of limited use, given the complexity of skin and its interactions with the environment. Nevertheless, they can provide a plausible basis for interpreting some experimental observations and thereby help to get useful information from measurements. The main example I will use for illustration is the relationship between hydration, TEWL and thickness in stratum corneum tape stripping experiments.

 

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