Acne in Underdeveloped Countries

Health  & Ethnicity
By Michael Russell

Acne vulgaris is a skin disease that affects between 79% and 95% of the population in America and Europe. Even adult men and women, between 40% and 54% of them, have some kind of acne. After the age of 45, 12% of women and 3% of men still suffer from this affliction.

In the United States there are about 50 million individuals affected by this skin disease. There it is not only present in adolescents, but in children and adults alike. Of those adults older than 25 years 54% of women and 40% of men complain about some kind of acne. About 10% of them battle until late middle age with this problem. These statistics are about the same as those found in studies carried out 20 years ago.

Statistics vary considerably when dealing with children between 10 and 12.Some studies put the number of children suffering from acne in this age group at 30%, whereas other researchers say that it is up to 60%. There is less discrepancy however when dealing with adolescents who are between 16 and 18 years old. Studies agree that the percentage there lies between 79% to 95%.

In Caucasian populations even a significant number of children between 4 and 7 years of age are in medical treatment because of acne. It is therefore clear that acne is a widespread disease in light-skinned societies, where it not only affects young children and adolescents, but a significant portion of people 25 years and older.

In African and Asian societies there are far less people, adolescents or adults alike, that have some kind of facial acne: only 2%. This is not so only because of hereditary factors. The generally more polluted environments in America and Europe play an important role in the far higher incidence of facial acne in Western societies.

Even though there are only a few studies that deal with acne in underdeveloped societies the results in this research show that acne is far more prevalent in industrialized nations. This is most likely due to dietary habits. People in the West are very fond of dairy products, of alcohol, coffee and tea, products rich in fat like margarine and cooking oils, cereals and sugar, all of which are detrimental to health when eaten in excess. People in Africa or South America, for example, eat far more fruit and vegetables, have a lower fat intake and eat more food with a higher percentage of carbohydrates.

Studies carried out in South Africa, for example, showed that the incidence of acne was far lower in the Bantu population than among whites. Both ethnic groups reside in the area of Pretoria. Only 16% of Bantu adolescents suffered from acne whereas 45% of the white teenagers were afflicted with it. Taking into consideration all age groups in this sample, only 2% of the natives had acne, compared to 10% of the whites. Among other tribes it was suggested that acne as a widespread problem only surfaced when those people left their rural villages and moved closer to urbanized areas or cities.

Since the early 1980s a lot of evidence has been gathered that demonstrates that native populations getting in contact with Western civilization usually suffer from an overall health perspective and this is definitely true in the case of skin diseases such as acne.