Skin environmental insults

When disruption of the skin barrier occurs, either due to environmental insults, intrinsic constitutional defects, deficient reparative mechanisms or a combination of these factors (Thune 1996a), excessive... 

Stratum corneum, the outermost layer of mammalian epidermis, functions physiologically as the principal diflFusion barrier to molecules penetrating the skin and as a protective physical barrier to mechanical insults at the skin surface. Data suggest that these functions are critically dependent on the specific morphological and macromolecular organization of the membrane mosaic (16, 17, 18, 19, 20). Thus, alterations of biophysical properties arise from environmental factors acting directly on the membrane or upon the keratinization process, and they affect... 

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