Correlation of acne with dairy products - Fact or a Misconception

Introduction: Nutrition and diet are affecting overall health. Acne is one of the most common dermatological conditions. Excess sebum, hormones, bacteria and hyper proliferation of follicular cells are the major etiologic factors for acne. Hormones sourced from and stimulated by dairy and high glycemic load foods, all appear to contribute to this overstimulation. Hence this study was done as currently the relationship of diet and acne is not clear. Materials and Method: It is a cross sectional questionnaire based study. 200 Clinically diagnosed acne vulgaris patients between the age group of 15-30 years were enrolled for the study. Informed written consent was obtained from all patients. A detailed history and clinical examination was taken and all patients were asked to complete self-structured questionnaire based on diet & acne. Digital photograph and grading of acne using Michelson's acne severity index was done. All the statistical analyses were carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics software version 2015. Results: Out of these 200 patients with positive correlation to diet in acne, 145(72.5%) were females & rest 55(27.5%) males. Dietary intake of the patients in this study included - Milk & milk products (60%), Chocolate (41%), Nuts (38%), Cakes/ biscuits (36%), followed by Oily food and Eggs. Among the 120 patients consuming milk products, 76% were on whole milk & 24% skim milk. Acne severity increases proportionately with the consumption of whole milk and mostly seen in patients consuming more than 14 servings of milk per week. Positive association of body weight and acne p=0.011. Mean age of the subjects was 26.15+/-2.5(years). Conclusion: According to this study diet could play a role in pathogenesis of acne and high glycemic diet could aggravate acne. However, in addition to high glycemic diet, a positive association of acne with moderate-to-high intake of dairy products was also made. It was more in whole milk compared to patients on skim milk.