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Premature Skin Wrinkling And Cigarette Smoking In Young People Connected
A DGReview of :"Cigarette smoking associated with premature facial wrinkling: image analysis of facial skin replicas"
International Journal of Dermatology
03/26/2002
By Veronica Rose
Premature facial wrinkling in young people is associated with smoking. Therefore, it is suggested this should now be added to the list of disorders with which smoking is considered a causative factor.
Researchers in the Department of Dermatology, at the College of Medicine, Catholic University of Korea in Seoul designed a study to determine the risk factor of cigarette smoking relative to the development of premature facial wrinkling.
A total of 350 subjects, aged between 20-69 years, were enrolled in the study and divided into three groups: 123 non-smokers, 160 who were currently smoking and 67 who were past smokers.
Subjects responded to questions relative to their status of cigarette smoking, weight changes, average time of exposure to the sun, (both recreational and occupational)over one month. In addition, researchers questioned whether the subjects had undergone previous medical and facial cosmetic surgery.
Both computerized image analyses of silicone skin replicas and clinical visual measurements were used in the study. A severity score was assigned to each subject based on a predetermined criteria.
A higher degree of facial wrinkling was observed among current smokers by comparison with non- and past smokers. Those who had smoked heavily at a younger age in the past had less facial wrinkling than current smokers. From the age-adjusted analysis a relative risk of moderate to severe wrinkling for current by comparison with non-smokers was determined as 2.72 (confidence interval C1: 1.32 ?3.21, P< 0.05).
Current smokers with more than 19 and 11-19 pack years of smoking had relative risks of 2.29 (C1: 1.14 -4.1, P, 0.05) by comparison with 1.75 (C1: 1.54-3.67, P<0.05) among non smokers.
Image analysis of facial skin replicas, indicated mean values of Ra (Arithmetic average roughness), and Rt (distance between the highest and lowest values) were higher among current smokers by comparison with non- and past smokers in all age groups.
Researchers considered this indicated a strong correlation between cigarette smoking and skin wrinkling. Additionally, it was observed that there was microscopic superficial wrinkling (Ra and Rt) in younger current smokers aged between 20 and 39 years.
International Journal of Dermatology 2002 Vol41 No1 pp21.
"Cigarette smoking associated with premature facial wrinkling: image analysis of facial skin replicas"
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