Skin defects set off alarm with widespread and potentially harmful effects

When patches of red, flaky and itchy skin on newborn mice led rapidly to their deaths, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis looked for the reason why. What they found was a molecular alarm system that serves as a sentinel to monitor the integrity of skin — the body's essential protective barrier. The fatal effects of raising this alarm in the lab mice suggests generally that certain kinds of impairments to the skin's structure can potentially trigger harmful effects in other areas of the body, according to the researchers.

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