Acne results in higher anxiety in adolescent girls. Although acne and moderate/severe acne are more common in adolescent boys, the severity of acne was found to be similar in boys and girls with acne. Adolescent girls are more vulnerable than boys to the negative psychological effects of acne.

Background: Psychiatric comorbidity in patients with skin disorders has been reported. Objective: To find out the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in dermatology outpatients and to investigate the factors that affect the psychiatric symptoms. Methods: 256 patients attending our dermatology outpatient clinic completed a 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) following their dermatologic examination. A standardized personal interview was performed to establish a psychiatric diagnosis in patients sampled by using a stratified random sampling method. Results: The prevalence of psychiatric disorders was found to be 33.4% in the study group. The mean of the total GHQ scores of the sample group (n = 256 patients) was 3.656. The duration of the dermatologic complaints, sex of the subjects, localization of the lesions, and dermatologic diagnosis did not affect the total GHQ scores of the patients. Conclusion: Psychiatric comorbidity in 33.4% of the dermatology outpatients indicates the need for considering emotional factors for an effective management of the cutaneous disorders.

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SummaryBackgroundPsoriasis is an inflammatory disease characterized by increased squamous cell proliferation and impaired differentiation. Vitamin D, Calcitriol, and its analogues are successfully used for psoriasis therapy. However, it is unknown why some psoriasis patients are resistant to Vitamin D therapy. Vitamin D mediates its activity by a nuclear receptor. It is suggested that polymorphisms and haplotypes in the VDR gene may explain the differences in response to vitamin D therapy.Material/MethodsIn this study, 102 psoriasis patients and 102 healthy controls were studied for VDR gene polymorphisms. The Fok I, Bsm I, Apa I and Taq I polymorphisms were examined by PCR-RFLP, and 50 subjects received vitamin D therapy to evaluate the association between VDR gene polymorphisms and response to vitamin D therapy. Existence of cutting site is shown by capital letters, and lack was shown by lower case. The haplotypes were analysed by CHAPLIN.ResultsThere was significant difference in allele frequency of T and genotype frequency of Tt between cases and controls (p values 0.038 and 0.04, respectively). The Aa and bb genotypes were significantly higher in early onset than late onset psoriasis (p values 0.008 and 0.04, respectively). The genotypes Ff, ff and TT are significantly different between vitamin D3 therapy responders and non-responders (p values 0.04, 0.0001, 0.009, respectively). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report showing importance of VDR gene haplotypes in psoriasis, the significance of the Wald and LR (Likelihood Ratio) statistics (p=0,0042) suggest that FfBbAatt is a disease-susceptibility haplotype.ConclusionsHaplotype analysis is a recent and commonly used method in genetic association studies. Our results reveal a previously unidentified susceptibility haplotype and indicate that certain haplotypes are important in the resistance to vitamin D3 therapy and the onset of psoriasis. The haplotypes can give valuable data where genotypes unable to do.