Assessment of patient-to-patient and intra-individual human abdominal skin immune cell variability.

[INTRODUCTION] The objective of the study was to characterize the baseline intra-individual and inter-individual variability of immune cell subsets within abdominoplasty skin specimens.

[METHODS] Abdominoplasty biopsies were taken from 5 patients and analysed using the Vectra 3 automated quantitative pathology imaging system with inForm software.

[RESULTS] Adjacent skin regions demonstrated intra-patient variability in immune subset counts ranging from 1- to 5-fold. Inter-variability between patients was approximately 2- to 7-fold for most subsets, except for HLA-DR antigen presenting cells, which varied 19-fold.

[CONCLUSIONS] Our data highlight the importance of including multiple patients and multiple patient samples when designing dermatological studies that utilise abdominoplasty skin.