Effect of Skin Lipid Barrier Formation on Hataedock Treatment with Douchi

Objectives: Hataedock is indigenous treatment of Korean medicine that administers herbal extracts orally to newborn infants for remove the fetal heat.The purpose of this study was to evaluate skin lipid barrier formation effect of Hataedock treatment with Douchi.Methods: We measured the Western blot to observe the expression of protein such as involucrin and loricrin.Moreover, we observed immunohistochemical changes in NC/Nga mice.The 3-week-old NC/Nga mice were divided into 3 groups: the 3-week-old control group (3w-Ctrl), 5-week-old control group (5w-Ctrl), and the Hataedock-treated group (5w-FGT).Only the 5w-FGT group was treated with Douchi at the 3rd week.We identified the changes of the lipid skin barrier and protein differentiation through immunohistochemical changes of involucrin, loricrin, filaggrin and acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) in the stratum corneum.Results: The expression of involucrin and loricrin was increased in the Western blot that was treated with concentration of Douchi extracts.In 5w-FGT group, loricrin-positive reaction was increased by 54.0%, involucrin-positive reaction was increased by 84.0%, filaggrin-positive reaction was increased by 108.0% and ASM-positive reaction was increased by 91.0% in the stratum corneum.Conclusions: These results suggest that Hataedock treatment with Douchi promoted skin lipid barrier formation by promoting differentiation of keratinocytes.