Abstract

Rosacea and Parkinson's disease (PD) are two completely different pathologies, with different outcomes, that share a common interesting feature as their proposed originating factor. Both conditions show inflammation as a pre-dominant aspect of their pathogenesis, having an important role in the excessive breakdown of connective tissue components. Metalloproteinases (MMPs) and Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are present in the skin and brain in physio-logical conditions, but can be significantly up regulated due to the disruption of normal signaling pathways, promot-ing an inflammatory cascade that results in the development of sustained inflammation. Recent evidence supports a link between these pathologies by showing an increased incidence of PD in patients with rosacea and a younger age at PD onset in these individuals, when compared to the reference population. In addition, tetracycline's anti-inflammatory properties shown in rosacea have been demonstrated in mouse models of neurodegenerative diseases like PD. Data from a Danish cohort study suggesting that the lack of rosacea disease severity-dependent association with the risk of PD is possibly due to the inhibition of the disease-severity effect by the treatment of moderate to severe rosacea with tetracycline may support this finding.

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