Acne rosacea or couperose skin? Similarites and differences

Skin redness, irritations, and stinging on the face are symptoms that can relate to many dermatological issues, e.g. sensitive or couperose skin or acne rosacea. How to tell them apart and find the cause?

Correct diagnosis of skin problems is extremely difficult without specialist knowledge and experience. Therefore, if you have any doubts about the origin of the redness and irritations, you should definitely go and see an expert – beautician or even better a dermatologist.

Obviously, it is good to be also aware of the differences between acne rosacea and couperose skin because those two skin problems are often mistaken for one another. No wonder, since their symptoms are so similar.

Couperose skin – the characteristic

It is also called sensitive skin because the symptoms of it often occur due to external factors that cause the skin to react badly. The most popular are high temperature, some foods (especially spicy ones), the sun, freeze, some cosmetics, etc.

The characteristic features of couperose skin are:

• telangiectasias, also called spider veins,
• redness and occasional rubor,
• skin irritation, discomfort, and tightness,
• dryness and hyperresponsiveness, e.g. to the touch.

It is worth highlighting the fact that couperose skin is not a disease so there are no methods to treat it. You can only lessen the symptoms and take care of the skin so that there was as little redness and irritations as possible.

Acne rosacea – the symptoms

It is different when it comes to acne rosacea which is considered a skin disease. It’s an affliction that is characterized by persistent skin inflammation. The curious thing is that the cause of acne rosacea is unknown. On the other hand, we know quite a bit about its symptoms.

When you have acne rosacea, you can observe the following:

• redness: at first occasional then persistent,
• significant skin sensitivity, irritation, stinging, and the feeling of heat,
• lumps, pimples, and skin changes resembling acne,
• visible, minor spider veins,
• in some cases hypertrophy and deformation, e.g. of the nose.

Obviously, the symptoms of acne rosacea depend on its stadium. In the first phase, it is difficult to diagnose because it resembles irritation and symptoms indicate that you may have couperose skin. It is way easier to diagnose it later on.

How to identify acne rosacea?

There are few things that can indicate that you may have acne rosacea.

1. You should pay attention to the redness that occurs sporadically but persists for a longer time. When it comes to couperose skin the redness is triggered as a reaction to irritation causing factor and then vanishes after some time. However, with acne rosacea, it is constant and located mostly in the central part of the face.
2. A symptom of acne rosacea can also be skin imperfections but not that typical as one may think. Those will be lumps and spots that create clusters on the skin. What differentiates it from regular acne is that… there are no blackheads and that means the spots are not due to clogged sebaceous glands but as a reaction of the organism.
3. Clear signs that it is acne rosacea are changes that can be observed on the face such as thickness and deformations, e.g. near the nose. It is the effect of hypertrophy. You should keep in mind that advanced forms of acne rosacea can also have so-called eye form and that is yet another characteristic symptom of this affliction.