Menopause and Your Skin: The Pilocutaneous Syndrome of Menopause

Menopause is having a moment, but board-certified dermatologist and Menopause Society Certified Practitioner Dr. Corinne Erickson was connecting hormones and skin health long before it was trending. In this episode of the Science of Skin podcast, host Dr. Patti Farris talks with Dr. Erickson about how dermatologists can better care for women across the menopause continuum, from the first perimenopausal shifts to the postmenopausal years.

Dr. Erickson explains her framework for making sense of the long list of concerns many women bring to the exam room, including hair loss, acne, unwanted facial hair, itching, sensitivity, and dryness. She traces them back to two key drivers: estrogen decline and relative androgen excess. The conversation covers what happens to collagen, hydration, and barrier function when estrogen drops, why vaginal estradiol belongs in the dermatologist's toolkit, what the evidence does and doesn't show about topical estrogen for facial aging and crepey skin, and how she approaches female pattern hair loss, including why she asks about hair at the start of every skin exam.

She also introduces a new term she has proposed for dermatology: the Pilocutaneous Syndrome of Menopause (PSM). Like genitourinary syndrome of menopause and musculoskeletal syndrome of menopause, it gives clinicians and patients a shared name and a treatment framework grounded in the underlying hormonal changes.

Read Dr. Erickson's preprint, "The Pilocutaneous Syndrome of Menopause":
 https://figshare.com/articles/preprint/The_Pilocutaneous_Syndrome_of_Menopause/33090086?file=66996713

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