Use Deodorant or not? Study Finds it Alters Bacteria in the Body

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A new research posted in the journal PeerJ found that deodorant use can affect the bacteria living in our armpits. The study led by evolutionary genomicist Julie Horvath found that while deodorant or antiperspirant use can help control body odor by eliminating bacterial growth, it can kill some microbes that fend off harmful pathogen such as the Staphylococcaceae bacteria.

Horvath and colleagues looked at the armpit swabs of 17 participants. They divided them into three groups, three men and four women used antiperspirants, three and two women used deodorant and three men and two women were the control group as they used no product. The researchers swabbed the participants daily for eight days.

On the first day, the participants were swabbed after their normal hygiene routine, on the following days until the sixth, they were asked not to used deodorant or antiperspirant. For days seven and eight, all participants used antiperspirant.

The researchers found that antiperspirant killed off more microbes than deodorant.

"However, once all participants began using antiperspirant on days seven and eight, we found very few microbes on any of the participants, verifying that these products dramatically reduce microbial growth," said Horvath, via Discovery News.

Washington Post points out that antiperspirants killed off microbes in the study better than deodorants did. They block sweat glands instead of masking the odor. In the group that didn't use products, there was 62 percent of harmless bacteria that eat human sweat which turns to body odor. More than a fifth of the microbes are staph and the rest are other types of bacteria.

Antiperspirant users that stopped using the product had more than 60 percent Staphylococcaceae and 14 percent body odor bacteria and 20 percent other types of bacteria. Deodorant users had 61 percent Staph, 29 percent body odor bacteria and 10 percent other microbes.

Scientists aren't sure if the changes in the microbial ecosystem in our skin can have adverse health effects. More study on the subject would be needed to determine what kind of impact it would have.

"Using antiperspirant and deodorant completely rearranges the microbial ecosystem of your skin - what's living on us and in what amounts," said Horvath, as reported by Fox News. "And we have no idea what effect, if any, that has on our skin and on our health. Is it beneficial? Is it detrimental? We really don't know at this point. Those are questions that we're potentially interested in exploring."