Fig 1.
Representative photographs of arsenic-induced skin lesions.
A. Leucomelanosis on the back, B. Diffuse pigmentation on the chest, C. Severe hyperkeratosis (large nodular keratosis) on the palms, and D. Severe hyperkeratosis on the soles.
Table 1.
Descriptive characteristics of the groups of participants with and without skin lesions.
Fig 2.
Comparisons of arsenic exposure levels between the groups of participants with and without skin lesions using box and whisker plots.
Comparisons of water (A), hair (B), and nail (C) arsenic levels between the groups of participants with and without skin lesions. The center line indicates the median value, the box contains the 25th to 75th percentiles of the dataset. The whiskers mark the minimum and maximum values. The dots show the individual data points. Mean rank differences were assessed by using the Mann-Whitney U test between each skin lesions group. ***p < 0.001.
Table 2.
Association of arsenic exposure and serum periostin levels with the risk of skin lesions.
Table 3.
Direct and indirect effects of arsenic exposure levels (mediated by periostin levels) on skin lesions.
Fig 3.
Comparison of the distribution patterns of serum periostin in the different stages of skin lesions using box and whisker plots.
(A) Comparison between the groups of participants with and without skin lesions (B) Comparison among the participants without, early- and advanced-stage skin lesions groups. The center line indicates the median value, the box contains the 25th to 75th percentiles of the dataset. The whiskers mark the minimum and maximum values. The dots show the individual data points. Mean rank differences were assessed by using the Mann-Whitney U test (A), and the Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc test (B) between each skin lesions group. ***p < 0.001; *p < 0.05.
Table 4.
Association of arsenic exposure and periostin levels with the risk of different stages of skin lesions.
Fig 4.
Comparisons of the levels of type 2 cytokines and IgE in the different stages of skin lesions using box and whisker plots.
Comparisons of IL-4 (A), IL-5 (B), IL-13 (C), eotaxin (D), and IgE (E) levels between the groups of participants with and without skin lesions. The center line indicates the median value, the box contains the 25th to 75th percentiles of the dataset. The whiskers mark the minimum and maximum values. The dots show the individual data points. Mean rank differences were assessed by the Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn-Bonferroni post hoc test between each skin lesions group. ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; ‡p = 0.075.