Common Skin Problems In Women – This Is How You Recognize Them
With the arrival of warm weather, skin diseases are increasingly becoming a problem. It is very important to mark any alarming symptoms of skin diseases in order to have access to effective therapies able to improve the quality of life, avoiding, in the case of early stage cancer like actinic keratosis, the evolution in an invasive carcinoma.
Skin diseases are widespread: acne affects about 90% of young people; psoriasis affects 3% of the world population, over 2.5 million in Italy alone. Yet recent studies show that one patient out of 2 does not receive adequate treatment; actinic keratosis, an early-stage neoplastic lesion, affects 1.4% of the population over 45 and is often misunderstood and under-diagnosed.
Psoriasis manifests itself with the appearance of reddish and roundish patches, well defined by clean margins. As the pathology progresses, the patches can become covered with silvery-white scales.
Acne is the most common cutaneous disease of puberty and post-pubertal age and up to 90% of very young people are affected, even in mild forms. The development of knowledge on the pathophysiology of acne, in particular of the molecular mechanisms underlying the infection, has led to the discovery of novelties in treatments that in the coming years will lead to innovative therapeutic approaches even with regard to such old and well-studied pathologies.
Actinic keratosis, a cutaneous epithelial neoplastic lesion that develops spontaneously as a consequence of prolonged exposure to ultraviolet (UV) rays is less known, but far more dangerous. The timely diagnosis, in fact, allows establishing an adequate therapy that today can make use of different options: the optimal strategy consists in treating not only the lesion, but also the photo-damaged skin surrounding it, the so-called cancerization field.
The therapy of actinic keratosis can be directed to the single lesion, through selective destruction with physical therapies (cryotherapy, electrosurgery). In recent years, some drugs have come on the market precisely for this purpose which, in addition to the classic therapies, respond effectively to the specific needs of the various types of patients.
