Get ears pierced early to avoid keloids: study

Delaying ear piercing until the pre-teen years or later may increase a person’s chances of developing keloids—raised, fibrous scar tissue—new study findings suggest.

Among a small group of patients with keloids that developed after ear piercing, the majority had their ears pierced at age 11 or older.

Keloids are a “common complaint” among patients who visit the dermatologist, study author Dr. Loretta S. Davis told Reuters Health. “You can get a keloid at any age,” she said, “however, it seems to be much less common (among those who get their ears pierced) in early childhood compared to after age 11.”

Further, the dermatologist added, if the “parents have keloids, that child is probably at a greater risk of getting one.”

Keloids are produced by uncontrolled proliferation of fibrous tissue after injury to any area of the skin, including the ear, scalp, top of the foot and the chest.

“There is “no area that’s sacred,” Davis said. The flesh-colored, firm, and sometimes painful or itchy growths usually develop around the site of the injury - the piercing in this case - and then extends to nearby tissue. The exact cause and mechanism of keloid formation is unknown, but keloids are known to be more common among blacks than among other ethnic groups.

Davis’ study is based on surveys of 27 female and 5 male patients who developed keloids after having their ears pierced. Most (27) of the study participants were black and their average age was 24 years. Over half (56 percent) of the group had a family member, commonly mothers, who had also developed keloids.

Sixteen (50 percent) of the study participants developed a keloid after their first piercing, and 20 study participants developed a keloid after subsequent piercings, the researchers report in this month’s issue of Pediatrics. Those whose ears were pierced at 11 years of age or older were more likely to develop keloids those whose ears were pierced at younger ages.

“Keloids seem to be more common around the time of puberty,” according to Davis, of the Medical College of Georgia. Yet, she pointed out, “that’s when girls want their ears pierced.”

Among those with a family history of keloids, nearly 86 percent of those whose first piercing occurred at 11 years old or older developed keloids, in comparison to 27 percent of those who had their first piercing before they reached 11 years of age.

Various treatments exist for keloids, ranging from corticosteroid ointments to surgery. However, keloids often reappear after they are surgically removed and the recurrent keloids are usually larger than the original, the report indicates.

“Given the difficulty and cost of treating keloids, prevention remains the best approach,” Davis and her team write. “These observations suggest that parents from keloid-prone families should consider having their children’s ears pierced in infancy or early childhood or perhaps not at all,” they conclude.

SOURCE: Pediatrics, May 2005.

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