Prevalence and psychological impact of Acne vulgaris among female secondary school students in Arar city, Saudi Arabia, in 2018

BACKGROUND: Acne vulgaris is a common heath problem affecting adolescents with considerable impact on their quality of life. OBJECTIVE: To determine the prevalence of Acne vulgaris and its psychological impact among female secondary school students. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted during the period from January to March 2018, among all female secondary school students in 3 randomly selected schools, in Arar city (Saudi Arabia). The participants were clinically examined by a dermatologist to identify acne cases. Dermatological quality of life of acne cases were assessed using an Arabic version of Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI). Data collected were analyzed by IBM-SPSS version 20, using Chi-square, Fisher’s Exact test, Mann-Whitney U, and Kruskal Wallis test. P-value ≤0.05 was considered statically significant. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of Acne vulgaris was 14.3%. It was not significantly affected by age, marital status or nationality of participants. Post inflammatory hyper-pigmentation and scarring were detected in 11.6% and 8.7% respectively. Twenty nine percent of the cases had no impact; 56.3% had small to moderate impact and 14.5% had large effect. The psychological impact was significantly increased with increased severity, presence of acne lesions on face and other sites, presence of hyper pigmentation and scarring (p=0.001). CONCLUSION: Acne vulgaris had large impact on quality of life in 14.5% of cases. Students should be counseled and educated on how to deal with this dermatological problem.