Kligman and Mills also demonstrated that 33 per cent of mature American females had noninflamed lesions, particularly in the perioral area. As in pomade acne, certain cosmetics were  shown in the rabbit  ear to  be comedogenic. This cult  is  now  so fashionable in the  USA that many cosmetic  houses, where proven, label their cosmetics as being noncomedogenic.

 

  Cosmetic acne is  seen in the UK and certain kinds of make-up will  induce acne,  the lesions being mainly noninflamed.  Nevertheless,  in  Leeds,  UK, at  least, there is certainly far less cosmetic acne than in Philadelphia. There are several possible reasons for this: cosmetics may be different; lower quantities of cosmetics may be used - one's impression is that many American women  wear heavy, long-use cosmetics compared to UK women. In Leeds there are fewer Blacks, and the environment is cooler and  less humid  than Philadelphia. Nevertheless, this author's team thought it worthwhile examining whether cosmetics played a major role in the persistence of acne and investigated 139 subjects.

The severity of the  facial  grade was  related to the duration of acne and not the length of time for which they had used cosmetics. Table 3.8 shows that  those subjects who had used cosmetics for greater than 25,000 hours had no increase in the severity of their acne. The ages of these patients were not significantly different. If cosmetics played a  significant role in mature acne one would expect that the ratio of acne on the face and chest would be greater in those who had used the cosmetics for longer, but this was not so.