Acne and Heredity

What is Heredity?

The biological process of transmission of genetic characteristics from parents to their offspring is termed as Heredity

Causes of Hereditary Acne:
There are several factors responsible for the cause of acne in different individuals like hormonal imbalance, stress, activation of oil glands, vitamin deficiency, bacterial infection, uncleanliness, harmful pollutants etc. Heredity is one more important factor responsible for the cause of acne.

As we all know that there are several characteristics inherited from parents to their offspring like color of skin, eyes and hair, looks, height etc. By carrying out research in the field of genetics, scientist proved that Just as these above characters are inherited from parents, there are several other characters or genes responsible for hereditary acne may also be transmitted from parents to their offspring like quantity of oil production, size of oil glands, sensitivity of oil glands towards androgens, reaction of immune system towards propionibacterium acne etc.

This means that if any one or both of your parents had or still have acne, you are even more likely to have hereditary acne outbreaks than those whose parents do not have acne. Thus the above study confirms that acne can also occur due to hereditary factors.

How to Identify Hereditary Acne?
In the studies conducted by a number of scientists, links have been found between those presently suffering from acne and the presence of acne in their family history. Family history of acne is associated with earlier occurrence of acne and especially cystic acne. It was also found that people suffering from hereditary acne usually develop acne and acne scar in the same place as their family members have. The acne and acne scar occurred due to hereditary acne takes a longer period to heel.

Acne Genetics:
Researchers have recently discovered that certain genes are highly expressed in the skin lesions of patients with acne. This finding helps more to understand how acne develops, and it may help identify targets for effectively treating the disease.

It is also found that identical twins also tend to share acne problems just like they share looks because they got their acne genes from their parents. Thus, it was concluded that acne has strong ties with genetics.

However the research is still ongoing, there is no doubt the research will continue to yield new results and perhaps, deeper genetic causes might be discovered.

Genes Responsible for Hereditary Acne:
In order to understand the specific genes involved in inflammatory acne, scientist performed gene expression profiling in different acne sufferers. The result shows that there is a distinct pattern of gene expression in inflammatory acne lesions as compared to acne free skin in the same acne patient. The complete analysis of gene expression profiles revealed that 211 genes were up regulated and 18 genes were down regulated in inflammatory acne lesions. Different genes involved in inflammatory processes are chemokines, antimicrobial peptides, apoptosis-inducing proteins and intestinal collagenases.

The figure shows the hierarchical clustering of genes involved in inflammatory lesions from six patients with skin taken from the site of acne lesion and from corresponding site of a normal skin from the same patient. Each row represents a gene labeled with gene name while each column represents the patient sample. The color in each cell identifies the level of expression of the corresponding gene in the corresponding sample, relative to its mean level of expression in the entire set of patient’s sample. Expression levels greater than mean are shaded in red and below the mean are shaded in blue.