nAlkanes in the SkinReply

Authors: Peter M Elias Mary L Williams

Publish Date: 1991/11/01

Volume: 127, Issue: 11, Pages: 1728-1728

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Abstract

In Reply—  In their comments on our earlier editorial1 Küster et al provide further valuable information that may help to resolve the issue regarding the endogenousvsexogenous origin of epidermal nalkanes They now provide biochemical data on two phenotypic subgroups of autosomal recessive ichthyosis which do not differ in their content of nalkanes although the alkane content of both subsets was greater than the normal subsets We agree with the authors that photodensitometric quantitation underestimates nalkanes of shorter chain lengths due to the volatilization of shorter chain nalkanes during the charring procedure Since approximately half of scale nalkanes will have a chain length less than or equal to C252 the true values for nalkanes in both of their subgroups as well as in their normal subgroups are likely to be considerably higher Thus we believe that laboratories that rely solely on photodensitometry

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