Fat Chance Teen Acne Doesn't Contain Diacylglycerols

New research provides a fingerprint of the fats found in sebum, namely diacylglycerols.

The findings appear in the Journal of Lipid Research. 

Emanuela Camera at the San Gallicano Dermatologic Institute in Italy and colleagues recruited 61 teenagers and grouped them into those who had acne and those who didn’t. The acne group was subdivided into mild, moderate and severe. They asked all the teenagers to stick a special tape onto their foreheads to absorb sebum.  Camera and colleagues then took those tapes and analyzed them by mass spectrometry to see which lipids collected on them. They focused on the neutral lipids in sebum.

Diacylglycerols were the predominant species among the lipids in acne sebum. There also were fatty acyls, sterols and prenols, the study showed. Notably, higher amounts of diacylglycerols correlated with the more acute cases of acne.

PHOTO CREDIT:  AMERICAN ACADEMY OF DERMATOLOGY