Acne Treatments Guide - Articles

Acne starts during adolescence when your body signals your sebum glands to secrete an oily element that when on the surface of the skin it soothes it and protects your skin from infection by pathogens that thrive there constantly. If sebum does not outflow freely through the sebum canals to the exterior it produces multiple skin injuries that trigger an inflammatory reaction and the sebum accumulated there becomes a perfect feeding ground for the proliferation of bacteria.

Such infections place heavy demands upon the skin's components. Areas with continued acne infections due to moderate or severe acne frequently develop deficiencies of essential ingredients, impairing the skin's capability to defend itself and heal effectively.

Acne infections damage collagen and elastin fibers, interrupt the microvascular network and harm and kill cells. When healing happens, normally after a long time if a proper acne treatment has not be applied, a scar is left in the skin. The healthy functional tissue (skin) is replaced by connective tissue (scar).

Natural Ingredient Treats Acne

Bacteria have survived for millions of years by developing resistance to new stressors including natural antibiotics like penicillin. What really occurs is that the bacteria, with a high rate of mutation, ends up changing one or more of its enzymes that are used to break the link between a target protein and the antibiotic. As a result, the antibiotic does not have effect.

But to adapt to a peptide antibiotic that punches a hole in the cell membrane is a different story. To defend itself, the bacterium would have to modify the entire composition of the cell membrane. And to change the composition of a membrane would imply modifying most of the enzymes that are responsible for making the complex membrane in the first place.

Peptide antibiotics respond within minutes helping treat acne instantly. Part of the reason for this quick response is how the peptide acts on the cell membrane. But to destroy a cell, the peptide must also quickly find the bacterial membrane. How does this occur? The answer lies in the structure of the cell membrane.

The plasmatic wall of eukaryotic cells is very different from the wall of a prokaryotic cell. Eukaryotic cell membranes are made of a phospholipid bilayer and cholesterol. Consequently, these membranes have a low negative electrical charge. On the other hand, a bacterial wall is composed by fats and sugars. This difference in construction means that bacteria have a high negative electrical charge that quickly attracts the peptide antibiotics.

Peptide antibiotics are effective. In one clinical trial for the treatment of meningitis, a disease that affects 3,000 children a year, a peptide antibiotic not only destroyed the bacterium which produces the toxin, but it also bound to the toxin avoiding the harm the endotoxin produces. But bringing a new drug to clinical trial is time consuming and costly. It takes $300 million to bring a drug to market. This price covers every thing from finding, identification, production and clinical trials. This process can also take 10 or more years to accomplish.