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Researchers from the Department of Medical Microbiology at PGI have identified a kind of yeast that grows on oily skin and causes severe dandruff. They hope that this will help in finding a cure for dandruff, which has no permanent cure, keeps recurring and requires continuous treatment.
The yeast belongs to the malassezia family. Till now, only two species, namely m. restricta and m. globosa, were known and these are the most common causes of dandruff. The new species has been named m. arunalokei.
The study was conducted by additional professor M R Shivaprakash, PhD student Prasanna Honnavar and G S Prasad, a scientist at the Institute of Microbial Technology.
The researchers have named the new species after their mentor Dr Arunaloke Chakrabarti, who is head of the Medical Microbiology Department at PGI.
“Dandruff is a very common skin problem, and till now two species of malassezia yeast were known to be the main factors causing it. We wanted to find out if there is any other species of malassezia that causes severe dandruff,” says M R Shivaprakash.
He adds that the purpose of the study was to find out what exactly caused severe dandruff and later to find an anti-fungal drug for its treatment.
“During the two-year-long study, we enrolled 200 patients having different degrees of dandruff and 100 healthy individuals from urban and rural areas of north India. Dandruff scales and skin swab were collected from the scalp and nasolabial folds respectively,” says Dr Shivaprakash.
After examination, it was found m. arunalokei was the cause of severe dandruff in 14 cases. The study got completed last year and was submitted to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Netherlands, for publication.
“Our main focus now is to develop anti-fungal drugs to treat severe dandruff,” says one of the researchers.
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