Struggling through the teenage years can be that much harder when you have acne. Acne isn’t just a cosmetic issue. If it’s untreated, it can cause scars, pain and premature aging of the skin. Acne is known to fluster and embarrass its victims in the most unforgiving ways.
An Acne Breakthrough Is Right Around the Corner
Fortunately for acne sufferers, help is on the way. Scientists are about to realize a major breakthrough in the fight against those bummer blemishes. They’re about to come out with an acne vaccine that can stop acne before it even begins.
A Wide Audience
Acne affects people all over the world. While most of its victims are teenagers, people can suffer from it long into their adult years. Joshua Zeichner of Mount Sinai Hospital in New York is one scientist who studies the problem. He says that the world’s acne problem is getting worse, not better. An anti-acne vaccine certainly has the potential to solve a problem for a lot of people.
What Causes Acne?
Scientists say they don’t really know why some people get acne, and others don’t. What they know is that we all have bacteria on our skin. In some cases, the body is okay with the bacteria. In other cases, the body tries to attack the bacteria, and acne can be the result. Pieces of dirt and dead skin can also clog pores and cause skin blemishes.
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A New Approach
Common approaches to fighting acne today include skin washing, topical treatments and antibiotics. Some people even resort to the powerful medication Accutane. Accutane is a medication made from a derivative of Vitamin A. Although it can reduce the oil that your skin glands produce, it’s not a complete cure for acne.
How the New Vaccine Works
Some of the bacteria on your skin works in positive ways that help the body. Scientists don’t want to change or do any damage to these bacteria. What they are doing instead is developing an antibody that fights against the bad toxins and proteins that your skin glands produce. Fighting the bad proteins on the skin before the body reacts to them can stop the body from creating the inflammation we know as acne.
The result is that the vaccine stops acne before it even begins. Eric C. Huang is the lead scientist that’s researching the anti-acne vaccine. He says that the goal is to develop a medicine that helps the body ignore and reject the bad proteins without damaging the good proteins.
Can I Get an Acne Vaccine Today?
If this all sounds like good news to you, you’re going to be a bit disappointed to hear that you can’t head to your doctor today and ask for an acne vaccine. The vaccine still has to make it through rounds of clinical trials and further study in order to make sure that it’s safe for human use. We also don’t know a lot of details yet such as whether the vaccine is going to gain approval for all age groups or if it’s even going to be effective for use in adults. There is no word on what the vaccine might cost or whether it’s going to be widely available.
If you or your teenager suffers from acne, you might be part of the last generation to ever have the problem. This new vaccine might head to the market in several years, and it might finally help people fight acne for good. For acne sufferers, it can’t get here soon enough.
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