This sort of abstract just make me shake my head. If you read quickly you will think that this abstract suggests that Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO) causes rosacea. What this abstract is saying that is that rosacea sufferers seem to have a higher incidence of SIBO than non rosacea sufferers. The secondary result is that eliminating SIBO clears rosacea. Well that is no surprise ! Antibiotics interrupt the inflammatory pathway that causes the papules and pustules of rosacea. We all know that. This just published abstract doesn’t tell us anything new, although at first glance it might look like it.
What would be interesting to explore further would be what causes the SIBO. Could that cause point back to something triggering papules and pustules ?
If you view the AbstractPlus you will see that SIBO has been linked by the same team to Scleroderma, abnormalities in acromegaly, and IBS.
Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth in Rosacea: Clinical Effectiveness of Its Eradication ,Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2008 May 2, Parodi A, Paolino S, Greco A, Drago F, Mansi C, Rebora A, Parodi AU, Savarino V.
Department of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology Unit, University of Genoa, Genoa, Italy.
….
CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that rosacea patients have a significantly higher SIBO prevalence than controls. Moreover, eradication of SIBO induced an almost complete regression of their cutaneous lesions and maintained this excellent result for at least 9 months.
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Update: there is a thread over a the forum SIBO diet/treatment, where Artist mentions that Rifaximin doesn’t leave the gut so doesn’t directly have any effect on the skin. This leads to the question of what inflammation has it blocked and what can we prove that this means ?
On a related note Seth Kendall speculates in his paper Remission of rosacea induced by reduction of gut transit time, that
“It is possible that intestinal bacteria are capable of plasma kallikrein–kinin activation and that flushing symptoms and the development of other characteristic features of rosacea result from frequent episodes of neurogenic inflammation caused by bradykinin-induced hypersensitization of facial afferent neurones.”
1 comment so far ↓
Thanks for sharing this study. SIBO causes fermentation in the small intestine, which can be a trigger for some rosaceans. I am very sensitive to fermented foods, and fermented food is listed as a trigger by the NRS. Cipro is also used for SIBO, and I noticed that while on a course of it for a bladder infection, my rosacea improved for about a month. I later tried a course of Rifaximin (after reading this study) with the same results. Specifically, the treatments greatly diminished the redness I tend to experience in the mornings when I first wake up for an hour or so. The fact that Rifaximin does not cross the intestines into the body means it never even gets to the skin, so the benefit may likely be due to eliminating the trigger of SIBO. Cheers! -Artist
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