Rosacea treatment options as varied as disease's contributing causes

Key Points

Chicago - Exercise, sun, a nice meal and a little wine sounds like the perfect prescription for a good and healthy life, and it might be - unless this is a patient who suffers from rosacea.

But how should a physician approach the treatment of a condition when contributing factors consist of daily living?

"My job is to clear up the rosacea, and that can be done with treatment," Dr. Taub says. "Certainly if they can avoid extreme flare factors, that helps."

Dr. Taub says many of the most common contributing factors in rosacea include anything that causes the face to flush.

Turning to treatment

"Emotions and stress can flare rosacea, but you don't live in an emotional vacuum," Dr. Taub says. "So generally speaking, I recommend avoiding triggers that are really obvious, but focus on treatment, which is dependent on the type of rosacea a person has."

For erythematotelangiectatic rosacea, which causes patients to be red and flush, but not break out, Dr. Taub typically uses a combination of topicals.

Pyratine (0.125 percent furfuryl tetrahydropyranyladenine, Senetek) is a cosmeceutical cytokinin with anti-inflammatory properties.

"Anecdotally, I find that it works extremely well on redness. It doesn't work as well on breakouts, but most prescription topical and oral therapies do this job well," Dr. Taub says.

There are other conundrums for rosacea patients, Dr. Taub says. Heating the body and causing blood vessels to dilate can instigate a rosacea flare-up - but so can cold.

"Basically anything that makes the body heat up can contribute to rosacea, because dilation of the blood vessels is a way for the body to get rid of heat - anything that dilates blood vessels on the surface of the skin can contribute to rosacea," Dr. Taub says.