Background: Sulfur mustard gas is a chemical agent that has been used in many wars, especially in Iran-Iraq war. This chemical agent affects many organs including lungs, eyes and skin, causing numerous acute and chronic lesions including erythema and hyperpigmentation, respectively. This study was conducted to evaluate erythema and melanin in subjects with a history of exposure to sulfur ...

The presence of melanin in spleens of black C57BL/6 mice has been known for long. Although its origin and biological functions are still obscure, the relation of splenic melanin to the hair follicle and skin pigmentation was suggested. Here, we demonstrated using for the first time electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy that black-spotted C57BL/6 spleens contain eumelanin. Its presence he...

There is a growing body of literature showing the usefulness of multiphoton tomography (MPT) and fluorescence lifetime imaging for in situ characterization of skin constituents and the ensuing development of noninvasive diagnostic tools against skin diseases. Melanin and pigmentation-associated skin cancers constitute some of the major applications. We show that MPT and fluorescence lifetime im...

introduction: ablative and nonablative lasers have been used to treat melasma. we aimed to assess and compare the combining q-switched nd:yag laser (qsnyl) and fractional erbium:yag laser (feyl) with qsnyl alone in treatment of melasma. methods: this randomized controlled clinical trial was performed in our research center during 2013-2014. women with melasma and without a history of keloid for...

BACKGROUND The Fitzpatrick skin phototype classification scheme has become the standard method for assessing the reaction of the skin to solar stimuli; this method can be easily biased by different factors, such as ethnicity or chronic sun exposure. METHODS Diffuse reflectance spectrophotometry (DRS) is an objective and non-invasive method used in this work to determine constitutive skin colo...

The density of cutaneous melanin may be the property of the skin that protects it from damage by solar radiation, but there is not an accepted, noninvasive method of measuring it. To determine whether the density of cutaneous melanin can be estimated from reflectance of visible light by the skin, reflectance of 15-nm wavebands of light by the skin of the inner upper arm of each of 82 volunteers...

Successful treatment of port wine stain (PWS) birthmarks in human skin utilizes cryogen spray cooling (CSC) in conjunction with laser treatment. CSC pre-cools the epidermis to protect it from subsequent laser irradiation which raises the temperature of both the epidermis and the deeper PWS. As the epidermal temperature is depressed by cryogen, damage to the skin surface is minimized while the P...

The density of cutaneous melanin may be the property of the skin that protects it from damage by solar radiation, but there is not an accepted, noninvasive method of measuring it. To determine whether the density of cutaneous melanin can be estimated from reflectance of visible light by the skin, reflectance of 15-nm wavebands of light by the skin of the inner upper arm of each of 82 volunteers...

Background: Intense pulsed light (IPL) and laser treatment parameters should be high enough to sufficiently damage target lesions while minimizing collateral damage to surrounding tissue. Fitzpatrick Skin Typing, a common assessment tool for these treatments, does not directly account for the density of melanin, a highly absorbing chromophore typically located in the epidermis. Quantification o...

Skin colouration appears to play a pivotal part in facial attractiveness. Skin yellowness contributes to an attractive appearance and is influenced both by dietary carotenoids and by melanin. While both increased carotenoid colouration and increased melanin colouration enhance apparent health in Caucasian faces by increasing skin yellowness, it remains unclear, firstly, whether both pigments co...