ABSTRACT
In 1988, Wilson et al. observed higher in vitro TEWL values in black skin compared to white skin by taking samples from 22 cadavers matched for age and gender (1). Furthermore, Kompaore et al. and Sugino et al. found a signi‘- cantly higher TEWL in Blacks and Asians compared to whites (2,3). In contrast, Berardesca and Maibach found no signi‘- cant differences in baseline TEWL between Hispanics, blacks, and whites in two separate studies (4,5). Recently Fotoh et al. came to a similar conclusion as their study did not observe a signi‘cant difference in baseline TEWL between Caribbean blacks, Caribbean mixed races, and Caucasians (6). Luther et al. also found no signi‘cant differences in baseline TEWL between Caucasians, Africans, and Asians (7). However, in one of the largest number of subjects studied, Muizzuddin et al. reported the following signi‘cant differences in baseline TEWL values: Caucasians > African Americans > East Asians (8). The investigators also reported that African Americans exhibited superior skin barrier strength, since African Americans required the most number of tape strippings to raise the baseline TEWL past a threshold value (8). Similarly, Chu et al. also found that Caucasian females had signi‘cantly higher TEWL at baseline than African American females in a total of 151 patients matched by age (9). Comparing Japanese subjects to French Caucasians, Yamashita et al. observed statistically signi‘cant lower baseline TEWL values in the Japanese subjects (10).
