What is fungal acne? Tiny little bumps on the head:

Fungal acne also known as malassezia folliculitis is a very common dimorphic yeast organism that lives on our skin. This organism called malassezia for malassezia globosa or piterosporum ovale pinosporomo valley ,these things have multiple different names but at the end of the day it's a little yeast organism that lives on most people's skin. You have yeast growing on you fungus growing on you. It's healthy to have these organisms on our body they keep other organisms from growing too much, it creates this sort of symbiotic environment so basically these these organisms they live on our skin and  it's normal to have these and in most people it causes no problems at all it lives there  happily and it doesn't cause any issues. However in some people it can manifest in different types of skin conditions.

 Fungal acne or malassezia folliculitis can be caused by this organism super common things seborrheic dermatitis this yeast has been implicated and at least exacerbating and it making it more prevalent so seborrheic dermatitis is basically like dandruff plus a little bit more and then also tinnia versicolor which well a lot of people are familiar with this where you get this little slightly scaly. This pigmentation can be lighter or darker. Most people notice it in the summer those are probably by far the two most common things and there's a lot more uncommon entities that it's involved with as well absolutely. So it can manifest in multiple different forms of diseases in some people and some people causes no problems at all.

How to treat fungal acne?

When you see bumps on the skin they look like acne so acne, not fungal acne . Fungal acne is much less common. It is far more common to have regular acne than it is to have fungal acne so what does fungal acne look like or present. As classically it's described in all the studies ,monomorphic pink papules what does that mean it's just a fancy way of saying little bumps on the skin that all look the same monomorphic means that they have the same features and all of the bumps regular acne may have. Bumps of all different sizes might be a postural it has a little pus in it some might be flat open come done blackheads or a closed come done a white head that's what regular acne can look like. Fungal acne is more the bumps all look the same they're usually a little bit red and a study that showed that for fungal acne most cases , it feels itchy ,the bumps were itchy versus regular acne which is usually not itchy it actually can be painful especially if you have nodular cystic acne.Other things that are more unique to fungal acne it tends to spare the central face actually it's more common on the upper trunk and this has to do with some of the locations of our oil glands and then also hot humid environments that kind of perpetuate the occlusion and the oil production so distribution slightly different distribution meaning where it is on the body slightly different than it is from regular acne appearance slightly different than regular acne and characteristic being itchy slightly different than regular acne so if you know you have those features the other thing that can kind of lead you towards fungal acne is if you've been treating acne for a long period of time and it either is flaring or just not getting better.

A lot of people have a skincare regimen for acne that doesn't have any active ingredients against acne. They have active ingredient adjuncts something like niacinamide, alpha hydroxy acids like glycolic acid or lactic acid these are not acne treatments. Your main acne treatments are going to be benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid and retinoids. If you don't have one of those three you're probably not treating your acne appropriately. There was a good study that showed that you could use this topical ketoconazole shampoo two percent. One percent over-the-counter ketoconazole shampoo which is sold as an israel probably is going to be effective against it as well but you know because it's concentrated in the hair follicle a lot of times topical medications are not going to get really great penetration to that area. You may need an oral medication especially if it's really a widespread , it's most appropriate to use something oral or systemic just because it's very difficult to treat a wide area like that with topical medications.

 If you're someone who malassezia has been a problem for in the past you may need to do something to kind of keep it at away but then also don't forget to treat your acne on top of it if you have both so don't neglect the acne. If you're treating regular acne with antibiotics for a long period of time now you don't have these bacteria on your skin that are keeping this fungus on your skin, it allows that fungus to proliferate and create skin conditions and so if you're on antibiotics for a long time this is the same reason why people get yeast infections. It allows the yeast organisms that are not being targeted by this antibiotic to start to proliferate and so the same thing sort of happens if you're on antibiotics for a long period of time.