Where it comes from
- Made in
- Eccrine sweat glands, cut from dermcidin as sweat is made
- Sent out by
- Secreted constantly in sweat, so it coats the skin
- Acts on
- Staphylococcus aureus and epidermidis
- E. coli
- Candida
What it does
- Kills skin bacteria in the salt and mild acid of sweat
- Carried out onto the skin surface by sweat, where it stays active
- Low in the sweat of people with atopic dermatitis
In medicine
- No medicine; little dermcidin peptide in sweat is a research finding in atopic dermatitis, and goes with more skin infection 3
- Sweat is not a sample any clinic measures, so nothing is diagnosed through it
Beyond the body’s own use
- Its structure, solved in 2013, is a channel of six helices that works in the salt and mild acid of sweat, which is why it is studied as a template for antibiotics that keep working in body fluid 2
- Dermcidin, the parent protein, turns up in breast and other cancers, where it helps cells survive through ERBB signalling; that is a separate line of work from the sweat peptide 4
Sources
- Schittek et al., Dermcidin: a human antibiotic peptide secreted by sweat glands, Nature Immunology 2001
- Song et al., Crystal structure and functional mechanism of a human antimicrobial membrane channel, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2013
- Rieg et al., Deficiency of dermcidin-derived peptides in sweat in atopic dermatitis, Journal of Immunology 2005
- Bancovik et al., Dermcidin exerts its oncogenic effects in breast cancer via ERBB signalling, BMC Cancer 2015
This card describes what a medicine is for and what the evidence says; it recommends nothing. Talk to your clinician about anything you read here.