While attending the Dermatology Education Foundation (DERM) 2025 NP/PA CME Conference in Las Vegas, Lisa A. Swanson, MD, spoke on-site at the meeting with the HCPLive team about her presentation titled ‘Systemic Therapy for the Pediatric Acne Patient.’
Swanson—a dual-board-certified dermatologist and pediatric dermatologist at Ada West Dermatology—discussed some of the main points highlighted in her session, including clinical pearls on the use of systemic therapy for acne in young patients. She emphasized the importance of dermatologists being well-prepared to treat acne, which can consume a significant portion of a clinician’s time.
“There’s baby acne, which is harmless, and kids grow out of it, and it’s no big deal,” Swanson said. “But then there’s toddler acne, which is very important to treat because it can cause scarring. Toddler acne starts between the ages of 18 months and 3 years of age. Then there’s what we call mid-childhood acne, which starts between the ages of 3 and 7. It’s important to do a little bit of an endocrine workup for those kids because acne that starts during those ages is considered abnormal. You want to do a bit of a deeper dive to determine if there’s anything else going on. You either want to send them to a [pediatric endocrinologist], or you want to do a little bit of blood work.”
Notably, Swanson highlighted that teenage acne is now appearing in children at younger ages. It used to be abnormal to have acne before the age of 9 years, she explained, but it is now only abnormal before the age of 7.
“One of the most common theories for why we’re seeing acne younger is that it stems from hormones that are given to animals on farms, and then we might consume their animal products, so their meat or their eggs, or their milk,” Swanson explained.
Swanson was later asked if there were any clinical pearls for clinicians viewing her session or this interview that could help them in managing acne among patients with acne. Tips for addressing acne included:
Providing oral contraceptive pills both to treat acne and when one is starting a patient on a medicine for which they should not be getting pregnant
Demystifying isotretinoin by discussing its benefits and addressing the stigma associated with it
“I think all of us should feel comfortable prescribing oral contraceptive pills,” Swanson said. “During my talk, I shared the counseling that I give to patients and send their parents when I’m first starting those therapies, and hopefully, people left empowered to go ahead and prescribe those therapies themselves. The other thing I hope I trained the people to do is to have a good, solid discussion of the pros and cons of isotretinoin treatment. Isotretinoin has a little bit of baggage with it because of the iPLEDGE program, and it kind of has this big deal feel to patients and their families.”
To find out more about the topics covered in Swanson’s talk at the conference, view her full interview posted above. For more from DERM 2025, view our latest conference coverage.
The quotes contained in this interview summary were edited for clarity.
Swanson has served as a speaker and/or consultant for Abbvie, Almirall, Alphyn, Arcutis, Boehringer Ingelheim, Castle, Dermavant, Galderma, Incyte, Johnson & Johnson, Leo, Lilly, Novan, Pfizer, Sanofi-Regeneron, and Verrica.