Essential fatty acids and the skin

The realisation that essential fatty acids are of crucial importance for the maintenance of a healthy skin coincided with their discovery. Burr and Burr (1) first described the symptoms of essential fatty acid deficiency thus: “An abnormal, scaly condition of the skin is observed between the 70th and 90th day of life. Later the tip of the tail may become inflamed and swollen, and the whole tail soon is heavily scaled and ridged . . . . . . The hair on the back of the body becomes filled with dandruff. . . . . . Sores often appear on the skin. The skin of the face especially seems to become sore at times and the irritation causes the animal to rub the face continually with his fore feet.” deficiency in the adult human (3, 4) made EFA deficiency seem a practical irrelevance. As a consequence, sources of EFA’s were not included in the early parenteral feeding preparations, and the early days of parenteral feeding produced a series of case reports illustrating the development of EFA deficiency in human adults (5-10). These case reports provide a graphic illustration of the clinical signs of EFA deficiency.