Acne Treatment

Acne is a hormonal condition that usually flares up during puberty or other periods of hormonal change. Acne manifests as whiteheads, blackheads, bumps, papules and pustules that can appear usually on the face, neck, chest, back and shoulders. Acne is very common and and can vary in severity. It can lead to scarring and also causes emotional distress stemming from embarrassment and can lead, in sever cases, to depression and isolation. Here we present ZMedicAir product for the prevention and treatment of mild and severe based on Singlet oxygen-enriched air.

What is acne?

The areas of the skin on which acne is common have relatively high density of sebaceous glands that produce oil (sebum).
The sebacious glands are attached to hair follicles and secrete sebum to lubricate the hair and skin through the opening of the hair follicle.
The glands can get clogged due to the accumulation of excess of sebum and dead skin cells at the pore which results in acne. When infected with bacteria, the resulting inflammation can cause the appearance of papules and pustules, and sometimes develop into painful and deep cystic lesions. Severe cases of acne can result in permanent scarring.

Common Acne Treatments

The treatment of acne infection often involves antibiotics- topical and oral, retinoids and isotretinoin. However, most of these treatments are mainly effective for mild cased and cause various side effects; overuse of antibiotics can result in the formation of resistant strains of bacteria, while oral antibiotics, needed for severe acne cases, cause serious side effects preventing some patients from taking them, while those that can them, it's only for a very short time. As a result, many patients that have severe acne and those that experience recurring lesions, need more effective types of treatment with less severe side effects.

Nodular cystic acne

Photodynamic Therapy (PDT)

Light therapy is also used to treat acne. This therapy is only somewhat effective for papules and pustules, and less effective for non-inflamed whiteheads and black heads and for severe acne lesions like cysts. In this method, the light penetrates through the skin layers, reaches the infected gland, and by interacting with porphyrins, photosenitizers that are naturally produced by the bacteria in the gland, singlet oxygen and other reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced. These ROS kill the bacteria and reduces sebum production by the gland. However, this method has very limited effectivity, and, as a result, is usually applied in tandem with other acne treatments.
The effectivity of this method can be enhanced by the external application of various photosensitizers, giving much better results. However, in addition to being expensive and requiring several sessions, this method is time consuming, as a few hours of “incubation” are required to allow the photosensitizer to be absorbed deeply into the skin.
Moreover, this type of treatment has severe side effects as it is quite painful. The skin treated shows symptoms of a burn- it becomes red, swollen, itchy, peeling and scabs form. Sometimes temporary hyperpigmentation will appear, as well as a flare up of transient acne. Also, the skin remains sensitive to light and the patient is required to completely stay out of the sun or any bright lights for a couple of days.

ZMedicAir Device Acne Treatment

The intense burning pain felt during PDT treatments, the itching, the swelling, the peeling and so on, have been shown to stem from light hypersensitivity of the tissue following the absorption of the photosensitizer used into the skin. This is due to the formation of singlet oxygen and other ROS in excess within the tissue upon irradiation, which causes excessive oxidative damage to the tissue when formed at such high concentrations.
The ZMediAir device enables us to take advantage of the beneficial properties of singlet oxygen for the treatment of acne, without the adverse effects encountered in PDT. The singlet oxygen is formed in low and, thus, harmless percentages that are sufficient to kill the harmful bacteria infecting the lesions and to enrich the infected tissue with activated oxygen, heightening its energy and thus enabling its immune system to combat the infection more efficiently and the skin to heal faster.
Patients treated with the ZMedicAir device have shown faster healing of acne lesions, and, over time, a significant reduction in the severity and frequency of acne outbreaks has been observed upon regular treatment with the device. Additional tests are currently underway.

References

Jih, M. H. & Kimyai-Asadi, A. Laser treatment of acne vulgaris. Semin Plast Surg 21, 167–174 (2007).
Huh, S. Y., Na, J. I., Huh, C. H. & Park, K. C. The effect of photodynamic therapy using indole-3-acetic Acid and green light on acne vulgaris. Ann Dermatol 24, 56–60 (2012).
Babes, A., Sauer, S.K., Moparthi, L., Kichko, T.I., Neacsu, C., Namer, B., Filipovic, M., Zygmunt, P.M., Reeh, P.W. and Fischer, M.J. Photosensitization in porphyrias and photodynamic therapy involves TRPA1 and TRPV1. J Neurosci 36(19), 5264-5278 (2016).