Abstract
Although the lipophilic yeasts of the genus Malassezia are part of the cutaneous microbiota in healthy individuals, they are also associated with several skin diseases, such as seborrheic dermatitis. However, the effects of age and gender on the Malassezia microbiota have not been completely elucidated. We analyzed the cutaneous Malassezia microbiota of 770 healthy Japanese using the highly accurate real-time PCR with a TaqMan probe to investigate the effects of age and gender on the Malassezia population. The numbers of Malassezia cells increased in males up to 16–18 years of age and in females to 10–12 years old, and subsequently decreased gradually in both genders until senescence. Malassezia restricta overwhelmingly predominated at ages over 16–18 years in males and 23–29 years in females. M. globosa and M. restricta together accounted for more than 70% of Malassezia spp. recovered regardless of gender. The total colonization of Malassezia and the ratio of the two major species change with age and gender in humans.
Acknowledgements
This study was supported in part by a research grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (TS), a research grant for the ‘High-Tech Research Center Project’ from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (TS), and a research grant from the ‘Ground-based Research Program for Space Utilization’ promoted by the Japan Space Forum (TS, TY, KM).
The authors thank Ms Satoko Suzuki for her technical assistance and the 770 volunteers for their cooperation in collecting the cutaneous samples.
Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.
This paper was first published online on Early Online on 01 February 2010.