UHPLC–QTOF-MS Maps Skin Oil Changes Linked to Acne

Having oily skin does not necessarily mean having acne. Even so, little is known about how the oils on the skin's surface differ between people with oily skin who have acne and those who do not. To find out, researchers studied young women with oily skin, comparing the skin oils of those with healthy skin with those of women who had acne. They used ultrahigh-pressure liquid chromatography–quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC–QTOF-MS) to separate and identify the different fats in the skin oil, along with data analysis, focusing on how much of each fat was present, how long the fats' chains were, and how saturated they were. A paper based on their efforts was published in the journal Chemistry and Physics of Lipids.¹

What Do We Already Know About Skin Oils and Acne, and What's Missing?

Thanks to advances in laboratory equipment and data analysis, scientists can now study the full range of fats in the body in greater detail than ever before. This approach has become an important way to identify how fats change in different diseases and what those changes might mean for health.2Earlier research has shown that the mix of oils on the skin of people with acne is noticeably different from that of people without acne.3These differences involve several types of fats, including fatty acids, fats that store energy, fats that form the skin's protective barrier, and fats found in cell membranes.^4,5 Changes in skin oils linked to acne have also been found specifically in young women.⁶ “However,” write the authors of the paper,¹ “previous lipidomic studies have primarily compared clinically defined acne groups with healthy controls rather than examining different skin states among individuals sharing an oily-skin phenotype. The lipid compositional and structural features associated with different health states within oily skin remain insufficiently characterized.”

How Do Skin Oils Differ Between Healthy and Acne-prone Oily Skin?

The study included 66 women aged 18 to 24 with oily skin: 33 had healthy oily skin, and 33 had oily skin with mild to moderate acne. The two groups had noticeably different mixes of oils on the surface of their skin. In the acne group, the skin oils contained fewer "saturated" fats and more "unsaturated" fats, with a different balance between the two main types of unsaturated fats. The fats in their skin oil also tended to be made of shorter chains. Ceramides, fats that help form the skin's protective barrier, shifted toward shorter versions, with more mid-length and fewer very long ones. Two other types of fats normally found in cell membranes, phosphatidylserine and phosphatidylinositol, were also present in higher amounts.¹

“Acne-associated unhealthy oily skin in young women,” write the authors of the paper,¹ “is characterized by multilayered lipid remodeling involving sebum-associated, barrier-related and membrane-associated lipids. Phosphatidylserine-related alterations may represent a candidate lipid feature associated with deviation from healthy oily skin homeostasis.”

The researchers point out that this study cannot show the order in which changes happen when oily skin goes from healthy to acne-prone, including whether the rise in phosphatidylserine (one of the membrane fats that increased) comes before or after the other changes. To better understand its role, they opine that future research should follow people over time, measure this fat and related damaged fats more precisely, study the bacteria living on the skin, and look at the enzymes that process skin fats. Also, because the study included only young women, it could not show whether the findings apply equally to men. Future studies should compare men and women of similar ages, skin types, and acne severity, using the same methods, to see which skin-oil changes are shared by both sexes and which may differ.¹

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References

1. Huang, Y.; Han, T.; Yu, X. et al. Phosphatidylserine-Related Lipid Alterations Are Associated with the Shift of Oily Skin Towards an Acne-Associated Unhealthy State in Young Women: A Skin Surface Lipidomic Study. Chem Phys Lipids 2026, 105607. DOI: 10.1016/j.chemphyslip.2026.105607
2. Lydic, T. A.; Goo, Y. H. Lipidomics Unveils the Complexity of the Lipidome in Metabolic Diseases. Clin Transl Med. 2018, 7 (1), 4. DOI: 10.1186/s40169-018-0182-9
3. Camera, E.; Ludovici, M.; Tortorella, S. et al. Use of Lipidomics to Investigate Sebum Dysfunction in Juvenile Acne. J Lipid Res. 2016, 57 (6), 1051-1058. DOI: 10.1194/jlr.M067942
4. Zhou, M.; Gan, Y.; He, C. et al. Lipidomics Reveals Skin Surface Lipid Abnormity in Acne in Young Men. Br J Dermatol. 2018, 179 (3), 732-740. DOI: 10.1111/bjd.16655
5. Cheng, Y.; Sun, Q.; Gao, J. et al. Quantitative Lipidomics Profiling of Skin Surface Lipids and Skin Barrier Function Evaluation in Patients with Acne Vulgaris. Arch Dermatol Res. 2025, 317 (1), 349. DOI: 10.1007/s00403-025-03840-9
6. Su, Q.; Hu, X.; Yang, M. et al. Lipidomic Analysis of Facial Skin Surface Lipids in Acne in Young Women. Int J Cosmet Sci. 2024, 46 (3), 424-436. DOI: 10.1111/ics.12942