Alteration of the Distribution of the Alpha and Beta Components in Human Skin Collagen with Disease

IT has been shown that the amount of citrate-soluble collagen from human skin decreases exponentially with increasing age 1 . This is true for patients who die immediately following an accident and in those who are not debilitated and die suddenly. In chronically ill patients, the yield of soluble collagen shows a marked decrease from these ‘normal’ values 2 . This report shows that a difference between the citrate-soluble collagen molecules of ‘normal’ as compared with those of chronically ill patients is in the relative distribution of their component polypeptide chains, that is, the alpha and beta components.