How better to erase the tattoos? Science was his idea

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AFP

Wednesday, 7 march, 2018 09:00

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Wednesday, 7 march, 2018 09:00

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Paris | French researchers have discovered how the ink of the tattoo was of dying cells to live, paving the way for better techniques of cancellation, announced Wednesday, INSERM.

If skin renews itself constantly, she has this amazing ability to keep the drawings on its surface for decades, are reminiscent of the researchers, while Paris hosts from Friday to Sunday, the largest convention in the world of tattoo artists, the 8th World of the tattoo.

Scientists grouped in the Center of immunology of Marseille-Luminy think they have figured out how to deny the belief according to which ” the cell carrier of pigment lived forever “.

“This assumption is called into question”, said in a press release the national Institute of health and medical research.

The essential question: in what type of cell is housed in the ink? It was believed that it was in the fibroblasts, the dermis, which among other things allow the healing.

This would, in fact, in the macrophages, specialised immune cells that defend the body against infectious agents by ingesting them.

These macrophages are, it seems, the same thing with the ink. And they pass it on generation after generation.

“This cycle of capture, release and recapture of the pigment occurs continuously in a tattooed skin “, according to the researchers in marseille.

The phenomenon has been observed on the tail of a mouse tattooed in the laboratory. Not any: “a genetically engineered mouse capable of killing macrophages residing in his dermis”, to speed up the process.

“The appearance of the tattoo was not” for “the macrophages are dead is freed up the pigment in the area surrounding where, in the course of the following weeks, this pigment is reabsorbed by new macrophages,” said INSERM.

This discovery is expected to find its application in the complicated operation which involves removing the ink, to erase a tattoo.

The promising technique consists in “laser pulses that cause the death of skin cells and the release and fragmentation of their pigments”, namely “the elimination of the temporary macrophages present in the area of the tattoo”. To do then is to remove the ink from ” the lymphatics that drain the skin “.