Dead or Alive? A New Dilemma of Probiotic Skin Care for Healthier Skin

Abstract

Our microbiota, a collection of microorganisms is a living ecosystem inside (gut) and outside (skin) of our body. As a part of the inner and outer barrier of the body, it plays an important role in maintaining health. One attractive approach to enhance health and combat certain gut and skin inflammatory diseases is to modulate our microbiome using probiotics (live bacteria). Probiotics benefits on gut health is widely accepted, but we just started to understand health benefits of their use in skin care formulations. The formats already adopted in topical applications are live bacteria (probiotic) and dead bacteria, either inactivated or homogenized or ferments (postbiotics, or also called lysates or ferments). It is still a dilemma which format is the most suitable for skin care inventions but considering challenges in formulation design, development, manufacturing, and life cycle management of live bacteria in topical formulation, the focus is now shifted more toward postbiotic research to obtain similar claims as their alive counter partners. But still, the question remains, what are these additional benefits of having live bacteria in skin health care and if this is something worth the extra effort? Our first comparative study on both dead and live L. reuteri DSM 17938 indicated that probiotic in both formats could be used in management of skin inflammation related to photoaging and skin barrier claims like dry/sensitive skin. Additionally, the live format could be suitable for the management of pathogenic bacterial overgrowth such as in acne/sensitive skin conditions.