Prevalence of acne vulgaris among women with polycystic ovary syndrome: a systemic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Objective

The aim of this meta-analysis was to evaluate the prevalence of acne among women with PCOS worldwide, and in subgroups of patients with different age, geographical-region, and PCOS definition-criteria, compared to healthy non-PCOS counterparts.

Methods

A comprehensive literature search was performed in PubMed (including Medline), Web of Science, and Scopus databases for retrieving articles in English investigating the prevalence of PCOS. ‘Meta-prop’ method was applied to estimate pooled prevalence of acne in both groups. Meta-regression was conducted to find the association between acne in women with and without PCOS.

Results

We used 60 studies, included data of 240,213 women with PCOS and 1,902,022 healthy-controls for the meta-analysis. The overall pooled prevalence of acne among women with and without PCOS, was 43% (95% CI: 41–45%) and 21% (95% CI: 19–22%), respectively, which was 1.6-fold significantly higher than among healthy-controls. The pooled prevalence of acne in adults, and in adolescents PCOS patients were 42 and 59%, respectively, which were significantly higher than non-PCOS counterparts. The pooled estimated prevalence of acne in adult PCOS women was 76% using the NIH definition and 36% by Rotterdam-criteria; both were significantly higher than non-PCOS counterparts, respectively. In subgroups of adults, who used Rotterdam-definition, the highest prevalence of acne in PCOS patients was reported in East Asia and was 3.5-fold higher than non-PCOS counterparts.

Conclusions

Despite the presence of heterogeneity and publication bias among available literature, it may be concluded that acne is one of the common dermatological manifestations in PCOS. In addition, results highlight geographical differences among PCOS patients.

摘要

目的：这项荟萃分析的目的是为了评估与非PCOS健康女性相比, 在世界范围内以及在不同年龄、地理区域和PCOS定义标准的不同PCOS亚组患者中普通型痤疮的患病率。

方法：在PubMed（包括Medline）, Web of Science和Scopus数据库中进行了全面的文献检索, 以检索应用英语调查PCOS患病率的文章。应用“Meta-prop”方法评估两组痤疮的合并患病率。进行了荟萃回归分析, 以发现有和无PCOS的女性与痤疮之间的关系。

结果：我们纳入了60项研究, 包括240,213名PCOS妇女和1,902,022名健康对照的数据进行荟萃分析。在有和无PCOS的女性中, 痤疮的总患病率分别为43% (95%置信区间:41-45%)和21% (95%置信区间:19-22%), 比健康对照组高1.6倍。PCOS成年患者和青少年患者的痤疮总患病率分别为42%和59%, 两者均显著高于非PCOS患者。根据NIH的定义, PCOS成年女性痤疮估计的总患病率为76%, 根据鹿特丹标准为36%；两者分别显著高于非PCOS患者。在应用鹿特丹定义的成人亚组中, 据报道PCOS患者痤疮的最高患病率在东亚, 比非PCOS患者高出3.5倍。

结论：尽管现有文献中存在异质性和出版偏倚, 但可以得出结论, 痤疮是PCOS中常见的皮肤病表现之一。此外, 结果突出了PCOS患者之间的地域差异。

Keywords:

• Acne
• meta-analysis
• polycystic ovary syndrome
• prevalence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The current study was based on results of relevant published studies.