Heavy Cigarette Smokers in a Chinese Population Display a Compromised Permeability Barrier

Figure 1

Changes in epidermal permeability barrier function in cigarette smokers. Basal TEWL and barrier repair kinetics on the forearm were determined as described in Subjects and Methods. A one-way ANOVA Kruskal-Wallis test was used to determine significant differences as shown in (a) and (b). (c) shows correlation between barrier recovery rates and the number of cigarettes smoked. The number of subjects in each group is described in Table 1.

(a)

(b)

(c)