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.