Is Oilier Skin More Prone to Acne?

A study published back in 1983 in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology compared 12 participants with mild-to-moderate acne to another 12 other participants without acne. Both sets of 12 patients included people with similar ages and genders. The researchers determine the sebum excretion rate, which is the measurement of the amount of skin oil production, in each participant. As the researchers expected, they found that all the subjects with acne had a higher sebum secretion rate than the subjects without acne. In fact, there was a very strong correlation between acne incidence and high sebum excretion rate. This suggests that oily skin is more prone to acne than normal skin.

Furthermore, this study also found a link between acne severity and sebum secretion rate. Subjects with moderate acne had twice the sebum secretion rate of subjects with only mild acne.⁴

South Korean studies: A series of studies on the relationship between skin oiliness and acne have been published by South Korean researchers in recent years. In the first study, published in the British Journal of Dermatology in 2005, researchers determined the casual sebum level (CSL) of 46 female patients with acne and 46 female patients without acne by using a Sebumeter, as well as the skin type of all these patients. The CSL numbers were considerably higher in patients with acne than in the control group with no acne. This finding strengthened the case for oilier skin being more prone to acne.⁵

The second South Korean study was published in 2006 in Archives of Dermatological Research and was led by the same researcher as the study above. This study compared 23 females and 13 males with acne to a group of 23 females and 13 males without acne. The CSLs were determined on five regions of the face for each of these patients: the left cheek, right cheek, chin, nose tip, and forehead. Every area of the face had slightly higher CSL numbers in the patients with acne versus the patients without acne, with the exception of the nose tip. The nose tips had much higher CSL numbers in the acne patients when compared to the acne-free patients.⁶ Once again, these findings suggested that people with acne tend to have oilier skin than people without acne.

The same lead researcher also published more findings in 2013 in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology from a study with a much larger sample size. This study examined the cases of 278 male and 636 female acne patients from 2004 to 2009. For each patient, the CSL values of their cheeks and their T-zone (the forehead, nose, and chin) were determined. The number of comedones (whiteheads and blackheads), inflammatory lesions, and total number of acne lesions, which was comedones plus inflammatory lesions, on each patient's face was also counted. Just like in the previous studies, the researchers found a correlation between higher CSL values and the amount of acne. Specifically, higher CSL numbers, or more oiliness, were consistent with more inflammatory lesions. This held true for every area of the face - the cheeks, T-zone, and the entire face. Since this 2013 study utilized a larger sample size, these findings were considered more reliable than the previous studies above. The researchers concluded that the greater amount of skin oil a person has, the more likely they are to develop acne.⁷