Skin Disorders Guide

Apocrine Sweat Glands
Apocrine sweat glands develop, like sebaceous glands, from follicular epithelial cells. For this reason their ducts open into the follicular lumina. They are phylogenetic remnants of the sexually important scent glands of animals but seem to have no direct usefulness in humans today. Apocrine glands are found primarily in the axillae, perineum, […]

The skin is an impressively large and heavy organ. It occupies well over a square meter of surface area and accounts for about 20% of total body weight. As the boundary between our body and a hostile world, it serves several functions. First, the skin acts as a barrier for fluid movement. Internal fluids are […]

Melanocytes account for about 1 % of the cells of the epidermis. These dendritic, pigment-producing cells are derived from the neural crest and are first identified in the epidermis in 8-week-old embryos. In normal skin, they are found exclusively in the basal layer where they are interspersed among the basal keratinocytes. Each melanocyte, via its […]

Epidermis
The epidermis is the outermost layer of the skin and is the thinnest of the three layers. In practical terms, it 3 is no thicker than three or four pages of this book. The epidermis is responsible for the impervious nature of the skin. Fluid movement is restricted by the presence of a barrier zone […]