Acne May Protect Against Aging

There’s usually nothing good to say about acne but people who’ve had this skin condition may age slower than others, a new study finds.

Dermatologists have long noted that signs of aging such as wrinkles and skin thinning often appear much later in people who have experienced acne in their lifetime.

It has been suggested that this is due to increased oil production but scientists at King’s College in London have arrived at another explanation.

They find that people who previously suffered from acne are likely to have longer telomeres, a sign that their cells may be better protected against aging, they say.

Telomeres are repetitive nucleotide sequences found at the end of chromosomes that protect them from deteriorating during the process of replication.

They gradually break down and shrink as cells age, eventually leading to cell death. which is a normal part of aging.

Previous studies have shown that white blood cell telomere length can be predictive of biological aging and is linked with telomere length in other cells in the body.

The study measured the length of white blood cell telomeres in 1,205 twins. A quarter of the twins reported having experienced acne in their lifetime.

Statistical analyses which adjusted for age, relatedness, weight and height showed that telomere length in acne sufferers was significantly longer, meaning that white blood cells were more protected from the usual deterioration with age.

One of the genes involved in telomere length was also associated with acne in an acne genetics study also lead by the scientists there.

The researchers also examined gene expression in pre-existing skin biopsies from the same twins to identify possible gene pathways linked to acne. One gene pathway (the p53 pathway), which regulates programmed cell death, was found to be less expressed in acne sufferers’ skin.

The study’s results requires further investigation to identify other genes involved in cell aging and how they differ in acne sufferers, the researchers say of their study, which appears in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.