Melatonin treatment increases skin microbiota-derived propionic acid to alleviate atopic dermatitis.

Background: Melatonin has been reported to relieve the inflammatory symptoms and improve sleep disturbance in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD). Recent studies showed that melatonin produced beneficial effects by remodeling intestinal microbiota composition; however, whether the beneficial effects of melatonin in AD were mediated by the modulation of skin microbiota remains unclear.

Objective: We sought to investigate the mechanism by which melatonin treatment-induced changes in the skin microbiota composition further alleviated AD.

Methods: The changes in skin bacterial composition after melatonin treatment were detected by 16S-rRNA sequencing. Further mechanisms were explored in calcipotriol (MC903)-induced AD mice and HaCaT cells through skin microbiota transplantation, quantification detection of short-chain fatty acids, transcriptome and single-cell sequencing analysis, quantitative RT-PCR, Western blotting, and Cell Counting Kit-8 assay.

Results: We demonstrated that melatonin reshaped the skin microbiota in AD mice. The transplantation of skin microbiota from melatonin-treated mice alleviated AD symptoms in mice. Skin microbiota-derived short-chain fatty acids, especially propionic acid, were increased in the skin of melatonin-treated AD mice, which further inhibited FABP5 expression to alleviate AD. Propionic acid also inhibited FABP5 expression in HaCaT cells, which was reversed by the treatment of GPR43 inhibitor GLPG0974. GLPG0974 also blocked the therapeutic effects of melatonin on AD mice.

Conclusions: Our study demonstrated that melatonin alleviates AD through the skin microbiota/propionic acid/GPR43/FABP5 axis, highlighting a novel role of melatonin as a modulator of skin microbiota to alleviate AD.