Abstract
Skin roughness is one of the problems most concerning young women. We found many small swellings in the forehead of young women with comedogenic skin from the ages of 20 to 35. Although this roughness was supposed to indicate primary comedo, details have not been examined. We analyzed the morphology and the process of development of roughness. The results showed that skin roughness consisted of small and unnoticeable comedones which were above 100μm high and were colorless. These small swellings were possibly primary comedones named ‘missed comedones’ which were hardly supposed to be recognized as comedones by the persons who had acne vulgaris. We developed a new method of counting swellings in forehead, and the number of swellings periodically changed. Some of these swellings progressed to inflammatory acnes. We found that the persons who showed lots of roughness had a high amount of sebum. From these results we assumed that the excess of sebum and bad condition of the turnover of corneocytes may cause skin roughness and induce many swellings. We have developed effective lotions which contain salicylic acid and tranexamic acid as the active components. Application of these lotions resulted in a decrease in the amount of small swellings and improvement in skin roughness.
