by Adrian Perkasa

Created on: August 27, 2011   Last Updated: August 29, 2011

Acne is common skin disease, related to hormonal change during adolescence period but might continues to adulthood period. While adolescence acne is relatively easy to deal with, adult acne (dermatologist call acne that does not clear by mid-20s as persistent acne) is often unresponsive to common treatment.

There are two basic points of adult acne treatment. First, dermatologist has to identify what factors might trigger acne. Then dermatologist has to perform skin examination to determined physical feature on the skin.

Most common cause of acne is hormonal fluctuation, mostly affects women. Some women might experience acne flare up, worsen, and decreased following menstruation cycles. Some women have persistence acne as result of certain birth control medication. While women tend to affect heavily by hormonal fluctuation, men tend to have more severe form of adult acne than women, caused by higher testosterone rate within the body. Hormonal contraception is widely used to treat hormone influenced acne, while androgen receptor blockers (cyproterone, spironolactone, etc) are more favorable option for men and women with polycyctic ovarian syndrome.

Acne also might be triggered by cosmetics, some patients reported that their acne rise up after using some make up and cleansers product. A high glycemic diet also triggers acne. Patients with severe acne should avoid high glycemic diet and some cosmetics as a part of their acne treatment. Stress is another factor could trigger adult acne. Our body produces more androgen, which stimulate skin oil gland to produce fatty acid. Over stimulation of androgen will flare adult acne. Reducing stress is one key factor to treat adult acne.

Acne also caused by skin infection, notably by P. acnes bacterium. P. acnes colonized healthy skin, lives as normal skin flora, mostly occupying fatty acid in sweat pore. P. acne produce chemicals to break sweat pore wall and forming an acne lesion. Topical antibiotics such as clindamycine and tetracycline cream are commonly used to treat severe acne with P. acnes infection. After all, adult acne is caused by combination of multiple factors, so it’s important to do multiple approaches to treat adult acne.

On skin examination, dermatologist should determined physical feature of acne. Acne appears in many forms: (1) Blackheads (2) Whiteheads (3) Papules (4) Pustules (5) Cysts (6) Nodules. Sometimes acne followed by scars in many forms: (1) Ice pick scars (2) Box car scars (3) Rolling scars

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