The National Rosacea Society (NRS) is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2012, and is pleased to report on the vast ongoing progress that has been made toward fulfilling its mission of improving the lives of people with rosacea through awareness, education and support of medical research.

"When the NRS was formed in 1992, rosacea was considered a rare disorder, and the first treatment for the disease had been approved as an orphan drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration because it thought rosacea affected fewer than 200,000 Americans," said Sam Huff, executive director of the NRS. "However, it soon became apparent that untold millions of people suffered from rosacea but didn't know they had a medical condition and that it could be treated."

Based on subsequent research, the NRS now estimates that more than 16 million Americans suffer from this often life-disruptive condition.

As it became evident that rosacea was both highly prevalent and widely misunderstood, the NRS embarked on a public awareness program that resulted in coverage by virtually all of the major media of the day and now reaches a total audience of more than 400 million annually. As a result, millions of rosacea sufferers began to seek medical help from dermatologists, who were increasingly able to diagnose and treat this chronic and often complex disorder.

Since the cause of rosacea is unknown and there is no cure, in 2000 the NRS established a grants program dedicated to encouraging and supporting medical research toward advances in its treatment, management and potential prevention or cure. Funded entirely by individual donations, the research grants program has provided over $1 million to fund 51 studies to date, resulting in substantial improvements in the understanding and potentially more effective treatment of the disorder.

To provide a foundation for meaningful scientific investigation, the NRS organized a consensus committee and review panel of 21 medical experts to establish a standard definition and classification system for rosacea, which was published in 2002.¹ This was followed by a standard grading system, published in 2004, and standard management options, published in 2009.

Today the NRS provides educational services to more than 1 million rosacea patients each year, while the NRS Web site, rosacea.org, serves as the leading resource for information about rosacea on the Internet. Meanwhile, the NRS has continued its extensive public awareness program at no cost to the public, thanks to the generous support of an increasing number of companies committed to rosacea.

"Most importantly, through the commitment of rosacea sufferers, physicians, researchers and industry, an expanding array of therapies for the various signs and symptoms of rosacea is now available or on the way," Huff said. "We're extremely grateful to all of our members for their continued and vitally needed support."

Reference

1. Wilkin J, Dahl M, Detmar M, Drake L, et al. Standard classification of rosacea: Report of the National Rosacea Society Expert Committee on the Classification and Staging of Rosacea. J Am Acad Dermatol 2002;46:584-587.