With each passing day, tattoos have become more and more common. People who love art or for those who work with them must have already wondered why they stay permanently in our body. Experts say it's due to the immune system. See below for more details on how tattoos work!
Tattoos and their curiosities
see more
School director intervenes delicately when noticing a student wearing a cap in…
Mother informs school that 4-year-old daughter, who prepares her lunch, can…
First, let's understand what the immune system is all about. He is responsible for defending the body against an infection. In practice, every time a “foreign body” enters the body, the immune system generates an immediate response.
Among several phagocytic cells, one of the main ones that come into action during the immune response are the macrophages. After recognizing a foreign body, they phagocytose (“eat”) it.
After all, why does the tattoo stay on the body forever?
When you're having a tattoo session and the machine injects the ink, it goes into the area of skin we call the dermis (a layer that contains blood vessels and nerves).
For the organism, ink is seen as a “foreign body”; therefore, the immune system already comes into action generating an immediate response. It will then recruit the macrophages to where the ink was deposited.
These macrophages will therefore phagocytose the tattoo ink pigment molecules. However, the ink molecules are too large to be destroyed by macrophages. In this way, the ink remains trapped there forming the tattoo.
more than aesthetics
Tattoos are now also being done for medical identification purposes. For example, in patients who have diabetes and who can be found unconscious due to hypoglycemia or allergy to some medication, the tattoo will signal this situation.
However, we must remember that the introduction of exogenous pigments is not harmless and can be responsible for a wide range of skin complications; therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to medical alerts before performing the art.
Citing patients with diabetes again, when hyperglycemia is not controlled, it may lead to wound infections and impaired healing of the tattoo.
