In vivo studies of sterol and squalene secretion by human skin

This work was aimed at studying the quantity and composition of sterols and squalene secreted by the human skin. Lipids secreted by the entire skin were recovered by Soxhlet extraction of the clothing worn by a patient for 24 hr with a chloroform-methanol azeotrope and by extracting the water of a shower taken by the patient at the end of the 24-hr period. Squalene and sterols were quantified by gas-liquid chromatography. Plant sterols were separated from total sterols by thin-layer chromatography. Free and esterified cholesterol were separated by digitonin precipitation. In eight adults, seven of them with hyperlipoproteinemia, the total skin secretion of cholesterol ranged from 59 to 108 mg/day, with a mean of 88 +/- 17 (SD) mg/day. There was no difference in cholesterol secretion between the normocholesterolemic individual and the hypercholesterolemic ones, nor were there any differences according to type of hyperlipoproteinemia. Free cholesterol amounted to 54 +/- 5% of the total cholesterol. The secretion of squalene ranged from 125 to 475 mg/day in five patients. The secretion of both squalene and cholesterol was quite constant for any individual on a given diet. Cholesterol constituted 95.6 +/- 0.5% of the digitonin-precipitable total body surface sterols of eight patients, and lathosterol, the next largest fraction, 3.4 +/- 0.4%. Total plant sterols formed only 0.65 +/- 0.38% and beta-sitosterol 0.35 +/- 0.23% of the skin surface sterols in six patients whose dietary beta-sitosterol intake ranged from 230 to 3400 mg/day.