Teenager uses art talent to help research

Bryony Keegan, a patient at Harrogate District Hospital, designed a poster encourging fellow teenagers to come forward and take part in the research by dermatology consultant Dr Alison Layton.

Teenagers across the country are being urged to fill out a survey as part of work by the Acne Priority Setting Partnership which aims to find out the unanswered questions of youngsters with the skin condition and prioritise areas of future research,

Dr Layton said: “Acne receives very little research funding in the UK even though it is one of the commonest skin diseases.

“This lack of funding wouldn’t be so bad if lots of innovative treatments had become available in recent years but they haven’t. Most new prescription medicines are simply combination of old drugs.

“No one really knows what sort of treatments people with acne would prefer because researchers seldom ask them.”

The responses to the survey will be given to researchers working in the field and the organisations that fund them.