ArticleEvolution, medicine, and public health2016
The blemishes of modern society? Acne prevalence in the Dogon of Mali.
Article in Evolution, medicine, and public health, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Prevalence of Acne and Its Association With Increased Body Mass Index Among Adolescent Schoolchildren in Northern Sudan: A Cross-Sectional Study.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Saturated fat in an evolutionary context.Lipids in health and disease · 2025Review
- Is Acne the Same Around the World?The Journal of clinical and aesthetic dermatology · 2024Review
- Understanding the impact of acne vulgaris and associated psychological distress on self-esteem and quality of life via regression modeling with CADI, DLQI, and WHOQoL.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Acne vulgaris: prevalence, severity, and impact on quality of life and self-esteem among Egyptian adolescents.The Journal of the Egyptian Public Health Association · 2020Article
- The influence of exposome on acne.Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology : JEADV · 2018Review
- The skin microbiome: impact of modern environments on skin ecology, barrier integrity, and systemic immune programming.The World Allergy Organization journal · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
BACKGROUND AND
objectivesNon-communicable diseases may reflect an evolutionary mismatch between our human ancestry and modern environments. To explore the mismatch hypothesis for Acne vulgaris, we studied the prevalence and severity of acne in Dogon adolescents in Mali, West Africa. METHODOLOGY: We graded the prevalence and severity of acne in 1182 Dogon adolescents aged 11-18 years from nine villages using facial photos taken as part of a prospective cohort study. Eighty-nine (89%) of the individuals in the cohort migrated to the city during adolescence, enabling us to assess the effect of urban migration. Using multivariable logistic regression, we estimated the effect of predictor variables on the presence of acne.
resultsThe prevalence of acne in the cohort was 28%, with 90% of cases being mild or very mild. Thus, the prevalence and severity of acne was much lower than for adolescents in high-income countries. Controlling for age, puberty, and body mass index (BMI), the odds of boys developing acne was 85% lower in the city than in the villages (P = 0.002). CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Acne is similar to the 'diseases of civilization' in being promoted by the pro-inflammatory properties of modern diets. The low prevalence and severity of acne in the Dogon supports the mismatch hypothesis and suggests that acne should join the list of diseases of modern lifestyles. However, we also observed an unexpected decrease in acne in urban boys. Future research is needed for a deeper mechanistic understanding of the interplay between diet, inflammation, immune function and other environmental exposures that differ between urban and rural environments.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.