Abstract

*Hendrik West, Nathaniel E. A and Micheal Zack

Few studies have been completed in adolescent’s cutaneous diseases. The aim of this work is to assess the adolescent epidemiological profile of the cutaneous infectious diseases and its evolution between 1997 and 2007. We have performed a comparative retrospective study on all adolescent outpatients attending Charles Nicolle’s Hospital Dermatological Department on 1997 and 2007 and focused on cutaneous disease. The total number of outpatients was 9254 and 11343 on 1997 and 2007, respectively. Among this population, we counted 1155 teenagers on 1997 (12.4%) and 1176 teenagers on 2007 (10.63%). Comparatively, the results revealed that there were no significant differences in terms of age and gender between 1997 and 2007. For both years, the majority of cutaneous infections were of viral origin, followed by fungal dermatosis, bacterial dermatosis and finally parasitic dermatosis. We have noted a major modification in the skin infections profile: a decrease in bacterial skin diseases frequency (P < 10-3 ), and an increase in warts (P = 0.02) and scabies (P = 0.014). Meanwhile, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) including venereal warts have also considerably increased especially in teenage females (P = 0.059).