Chiang Mai Journal of Science

     Skin diseases, such as dermatitis, allergies and eczema, are one of the most leading causes of global diseases, affecting millions of people worldwide. Most of them are associated with the skin dehydration condition, caused by the loss of natural moisturizing factors (NMFs) in the corneocyte skin layer. To resolve this issue, the exogenously administered hyaluronic acid (HA) therapeutics were introduced. Nonetheless, HA sources from microbial fermentation is still expensive with potential toxicity from the toxin protein impurities. We demonstrated an alternative NMFs source from the mucus extracts of the Phallus indusiatus (P. indusiatus) mushroom. For this, the fresh mucus was partially purified by the sequential chelation (CaCl₂/EDTA). A combined use of both IR and ¹³C-NMR spectroscopic techniques confirmed the presence of glucuronic acid (GlcA) in the crude extracts, as convinced by the presence of the IR absorption bands at 1600-1603 cm⁻¹ (C=O stretching), 3000-3800 cm⁻¹ (-OH stretching), and at 1402-1410 cm⁻¹ (C-O stretching), together with the 13C-NMR resonances at 101 ppm, 79 ppm and 81 ppm. The disappearance of the NMR characteristic peaks, corresponding to the N-acetyl glucosamine (GlcNAc) at 1.9-2.0 ppm (1H-NMR) and 23-25 ppm (13C-NMR), suggested the extremely low level of the HA in the crude extracts. Nonetheless, these crude extracts showed the higher water content, comparing to the HA standard, highlighting their potential use as an alternative NMFs sources for dry skin therapeutics.