A recent study performed at the Istituti Fisioterapici Ospitalieri in Rome by Dr. Bruno Capitanio and his colleagues focused on 226 adult women who had acne. The goal of the study was to evaluate whether or not smoking had anything to do with the development of adult acne.
There are two types of acne that generally appear in adults. Both are similar to the kind of acne that teens get. In adults the “regular” acne is called CPAA, which is short for comedonal postadolescent acne. The other kind of acne most common in adult women is called papulopustular postadolescent acne. By its name, you can guess it includes pustules, and is pretty nasty looking.
Surprisingly, the kind of acne that was most common in the smokers of the group (66.3% of the women were smokers) was the CPAA, not the pustular acne. In fact, of the 159 smokers, less than 30% of them had papulopustular postadolescent acne. However, of the smokers, almost 73% had CPAA.
Results of the study were published in the November issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.
For those of you still smoking, this should give you another reason to quit! If you cannot quit, or if you have acne in the absence of smoking, we have a multitude of treatments available for you, such as IPL, prescription medications and topical treatments. There’s no reason to suffer with adult acne, as it can be treated.
