An infant’s skin varies greatly from adult skin, the barrier it provides from the outside world continues to develop over the early years, during which time it is much more prone to developing conditions rarer in adults.
Young skin is typically around 30% thinner, with a far greater tendency to irritation and dryness. Moisturisation measurements using a Corneometer instrument show far higher absorption rates of water in babies and toddlers compared to adults but also a faster return to baseline values. Tewameter assessments also show higher values in infants, demonstrating that the skin barrier functionality is not fully developed in infants, trans-epidermal water loss being a key indicator of barrier functionality.
Infantile skin has been shown to develop at a rapid pace to develop an adequate level of barrier functionality against changes to temperature, humidity, irritants and infection. Between birth and 8-12 months the skin is most likely to develop conditions of various nature, the most common being cradle cap, nappy rash, and infantile eczema.
The majority of the most common skin complaints for infants are related to infants having drier skin then adults and older children. A Corneometer is an instrument which utilises a dielectric constant in order to give a value of moisture content, 0 being driest and 120 being in contact with water. Corneometer assessments of adult skin compared to infantile skin performed by Aspen Clinical Research, 2014, show that infantile skin absorbs water from the environment to a greater extent than adult skin, however it also shows a much faster return to baseline values.
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