Contribution of Human Hair in Solar UV Transmission in Skin: Implications for Melanoma Development
- PDF / 2,089,916 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 593.972 x 792 pts Page_size
- 28 Downloads / 187 Views
Annals of Biomedical Engineering (Ó 2019) https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-019-02315-z
Contribution of Human Hair in Solar UV Transmission in Skin: Implications for Melanoma Development XIYONG HUANG ,1 MICHAEL D. PROTHEROE,1 AHMED M. AL-JUMAILY,1 SHARAD P. PAUL,2 ANDREW N. CHALMERS,1 SHUAO WANG,3 JUAN DIWU,3 and WEI LIU3 1 Institute of Biomedical Technologies, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand; 2Faculty of Surgery, University of Auckland, Auckland 1010, New Zealand; and 3Center of Nuclear Environmental Chemistry, Soochow University, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China
(Received 9 April 2019; accepted 25 June 2019) Associate Editor Daniel Elson oversaw the review of this article.
Abstract—Melanoma is the deadliest type of skin cancer with its prevalence on the rise. Recently, the melanocyte stem cells in hair follicles have been identified as the possible origin of melanoma upon exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) through skin. It is hypothesized that colourless vellus hair (predominant in childhood) can serve as an alternative pathway in transmitting these ultraviolet (UV) photons to the stem cells. To investigate this, we have used the CRAIC microspectrophotometer to investigate the optical properties of ‘vellus-like’ hairs and terminal hairs of different colours using UV–VIS–NIR light sources. It was found that the average attenuation coefficient of ‘vellus-like’ hair is significantly lower than that of terminal hair in the UVA (p < 0.0001) and UVB (p < 0.001) wavelength ranges. Next, the optical properties of hairs are applied to simulations for examining their influence on UV transmission into the skin. The results show that the presence of vellus hair would increase the solar UV transmission to the melanocyte stem cell layer significantly. The findings explain why children are particularly vulnerable to sun exposure and the positive correlation found between the incidence of melanoma in adults’ bodies and the number of vellus hairs in these areas. Keywords—Tissue optics, Melanoma, Skin cancer, Melanocyte stem cells, Attenuation coefficient, Monte Carlo simulation, Vellus hair, Medulla, Microspectrophotometry, Ultraviolet radiation.
INTRODUCTION Melanoma is responsible for major skin cancer-related deaths because of its high metastatic potential.21 The tendency of melanoma cells for distance metastasis
Address correspondence to Xiyong Huang, Institute of Biomedical Technologies, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand. Electronic mail: [email protected]
closely resembles the migratory feature of melanocyte stem cells.24 Recent studies have shown that the melanocyte stem cells in the bulge region of hair follicles could also be the origin of melanoma upon exposure to UV.23 Human hair comes in two major types, vellus and terminal hair, which are the predominant types of hair in childhood and adulthood respectively. It has been found that the melanocyte stem cells in the bulge region of the vellus hair follicle are about three times shallower than those in t
Data Loading...
