If Mere Bacteria are Responsible for Acne Pimples, How Hard can they be to Get Rid of?
It's a wonder, looking at all the hundreds of kinds of bacteria that call your skin home, that the researchers have found the very one to implicate in acne pimples, the scourge of teen life. Find it they did, a tough customer called the Propionibacterium acnes. You will find these bacteria everywhere on your skin; they make their home in the little pores and hair follicles of your skin, and have forever caused acne in young adults everywhere. Scientists never lose their interest in understanding acne pimples. To have an effective and safe cure for this affliction guarantees the inventor fame and fortune.
They just finished studying the P.Acnes bacterium's DNA; that is how serious they are, trying to find a way to defeat it. And the research does bring us results. They found that these bacteria mostly like it in the pores and hair follicles around the upper part of the body: the upper back and chest, and the face. All the oil that the pores and follicles produce, the bacterium thrives on, and consumes. In many ways, P.Acnes is quite a defender of healthy skin. It's genes allow it to launch terrible poisons on skin fungi and other bacteria that mean to do us harm. Scientists have never seen anything like the common bacterium that causes acne pimples. Some of its genes no one has ever seen on any other living organism before.
But that doesn't make it the good guy. Everyone has heard of the fearsome flesh eating bacteria, the streptococci. The bacteria that cause acne pimples, produce the same kind of flesh-dissolving enzyme the streptococci do, to destroy and eat our skin with. The only mercy granted here is that they don't do much of this. And its a genetic makeup allows it to quickly change form to evade attack by the body's immune system. But, perhaps, the role that P.Acnes plays in breakouts of acne pimples is a minor one.
Modern treatment methods today are basically directed at killing the bacteria, and preventing tiny skin pieces from clogging up the pores and trapping dirt and oil inside. Antibiotics don't really work well with this bacterium, because it has developed resistance to most varieties. In fact, some of the more stubborn cases of acne pimples seem to yield to nothing weaker than cancer medicines. Researchers are now trying to determine an easy way to defeat acne pimples. Vitamin A is supposed to make us shed skin so that nothing ends up clogging pores. All this research, and what we have to show for it is Vitamin A. Sometimes, it takes a lot of work to see what is right before you.
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