KP on thighs,

I understand your point, but I had to check this individual. They are entitled to their views, but they are clearly ridiculous considering Oprah's primary fan base is white women.

Anyway I concur, let's get to the business of finding a solution to K.P. Unfortunately, I doubt Oprah would help, as KP is viewed as a mildly-annoying aesthetic condition to non-KP sufferers. Think about how many dermatologist who just shrug it off and they specialize in the treatment of skin problems, so imagine Oprah. I just wonder why the large pharmaucetical companies give so much attention to psoriasis and eczema, but absolutely none to keratosis pilaris. It seems all treatments, that are prescribed by dermatologists were created and FDA-approved for psoriasis/eczema.

I agree I also can't believe how dermatologists casually shrug off the condition so easily, I remember how despondent this made me feel. There must be huge money to be made in an effective treatment for KP. Usually money talks so hopefully these pharmaceutical companies will click onto the huge market that is there soon! My fingers are crossed :-) I like to think Oprah may be interested in this issue one day but I think she will probably do a show on skin conditions & this will be a side issue, like you state it's not seen as such a big issue being entirely cosmetic, I guess we should be thankful that we have our health & there are way worse skin conditions out there like lumpy skin syndrome etc. (Yep I'm just your regular Polly Anna haha)

KP on thighs,

I not sure how big the money is. I think most people with KP don't know anyone with KP and rarely see anyone with it. However, I disguise mine in the summer, so I'm sure I walk past people occasionally who have it, yet I can't see it. I think since I've had this condition I've seen two people with it. I have seen no one in my family with it or any similar skin condition. I'm assuming in my case, it was extremely dormant and maybe a case of the flu or something activated it. Luckily, I didn't develop it until 21 years old, so I didn't have the curse of going thru childhood and my teenage years with it. I've seen more people with psoriasis and eczema, which is why I guess the drug companies do more research and development for it. Personally, I don't think major multimillion dollar research will come down the pike, until some billionaire corporate magnate with the "Bruce Wayne Syndrome" has a little daughter afflicted with the disease and they see fit to put their own money behind it to salvage their child's self-esteem. However, I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for this or Oprah. Most of her shows on these type of issues, have some Hollywood physician (in this case a dermatogist) mention the latest treatments for something while Oprah just nods O.K and she moves on to the next show. I still young and very business minded. I have promised myself, that if I ever reach the $50M+ level someway, somehow; I will approach the university with the top dermatology program in the U.S or abroad with a $5-10M grant to research a cure.

Yeah the Bruce Wayne syndrome does sound more likely (is it wrong to wish this KP condition on the entrepreneurial pharmacists children!! haha) I have to give you a huge thumbs up for your get up & go. I wish you all the very best with your business ideas & leaving a legacy :-) My great Aunt whom recently passed away left me with this beautiful poem she found, I thought with your mindset that you might like it:

'True success always starts
from within your heart,
for if you believe in your heart,
that you will succeed,
Your success is
virtually guaranteed.
Believe in yourself,
and have confidence..
and may you achieve
the very very best.

SkinE,

Thank you for setting that poster straight on the whole Oprah thing. Oprah rarely has african-american guests. Hardly ever does she cater to our particular dilemas unless it's on a global level. You'd think the average person would've noticed that by now.

Anyhoo, folks....this is just my opinion from reading literature and books on the Food and Drug Administration. It seems that it would NOT be in the best interest of pharmaucetical companies to find a cure for KP. They would surely loose money because derms are making alot of loot prescribing lotions and creams that clearly do not work. Even with the so-called treatments for Excema, it goes away and then re-appears in another area somewhere down the line. Hence, sufferrers end up going right back to the pharmacy for a re-fill which equals more money. It's a vicious cycle. Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of making money not finding cures. Sad but true. I suspect that someone who is truly tired of living with KP will be the one to develop a treatment that works.

i have to agree with chyna here...it's really sad but true. why would any company want to market a medicine that can cure a disease, when they can "treat it" knowing that you will have to come back and buy more prescriptions? i don't mean to sound like a downer. i've had kp for 4 years now. it sucks. i'd figured that it wouldn't be so bothersome to me, but i think about it all the time, yearning for clear skin. i continue to try to help it, but nothing, and i mean nothing has worked even remotely. my point being that even if someone found a cure, what are the chances that any company would actually market and sell this item? i mean, i hope to g-d that someone does, but i'm certainly not counting on it. if it happened then great. look at acne for example. to me it's eerily similar in it's course to kp. why? because for years companies marketed products that were partially helpful but nothing that rid people of it. same as kp. then there is 1 product that truly helps cure acne (accutane) and look at it's side effects. hence, i'm not going to stop trying to find something that helps kp, but i'm just trying to make everyone see this from a different perspective for a change..i really feel patience is the key. there will be something, eventually, that will be what we are all looking for. how long that will be who knows, but in the meantime, it's great that we could all come on this forums and share our experiences. it's really helped me at least, knowing that there are so many others who are suffering from the same thing as me and the support here is great. sorry bout the long post.

Pharmaceutical companies are in the business of selling nothing but drugs----

In a sense making them drug dealers, and what makes selling drugs (any level, on the street or in a pharmacy) such a profitable business is that your customer is dependant on your product--- and humans are addicted to one thing above all others, and that is gold or the more modern interpretation—money. Look into any history book and behind all the suffering, mistreatment and abuse of other humans, behind every war it’s there,

If you look deep enough you will find it. One could even say that our major design flaw is this addiction, but no one likes that word so they call it greed. So a drug dealer would be shooting themselves in the foot, if you were no longer dependent on their product. So none of their money is going towards curing anything, they prefer long-term treatment.

My best friend’s family carries a history of this very deadly type of skin cancer, and there is a very high chances that she will get it. So needless to say, she’s always doing research on the treatments, which are very painful and not very effective--- in here searching she came across this fruit from Africa, that when rubbed on the skin has been able to help, and even cure this kind of cancer, when nothing else has been all that effective. Just think about that, a piece of fruit, that you just rub the meat of the fruit on the surface of your skin and it’s actually effective against skin cancer. It’s so simple. But further in her research she also found out that a pharmaceutical company had done research on the fruit and when they isolated chemical and tried to make it into a drug it was no longer effective, so it’s only effective in unhampered with fruit form—so they just abandoned research on it all together--- and I don’t think it’s the kind of fruit that is often eaten so it’s not something you’re going to find in the produce section of your local super market. Which leaves you with cancer and having take a trip all the way to Africa just to find this fruit. (That I sadly can’t even remember the name of)

I’ve had skin like this for as long as I can remember and I’ve always been bothered by it, when I was a kid my step-mom called it chicken skin. And I remembered visualizing a raw chicken’s skin and just being disgusted; I’m not a real big meat person as it is. I’m 28 now and I’ve lived with it a long time now, and I’ve never been the type to go to the doctor for much so I’ve never asked one about my skin. This KP or whatever is all over my body it’s the worst on my legs and arms, it itches like crazy in the winter, and I have the pale skin that makes the splotchy redness and bumps really stand out and if I stay in the sun long because I don’t tan, I just burn and than it peels off and I’m just as pale and nothing I’ve tried has ever made it better. I did get tattoos over most of the skin that shows when I’m in shorts and a t-shirt so it doesn’t stand out visually as much but is still all rough and gets all irritated when I to pick at the little horns of skin and to state the obvious I pretty much hate it. So I finally yesterday I did a google search to try and even find a name for it. I searched under everything I could think of and came up with nothing that is until I searched under “chicken skin”. Then I found the medical name and I could barely pronounce it. So it looks like I’ll just have to deal with it, but its just another thing on a huge pile of things I was dealt. But you were having an interesting discussion, so that’s cool. And the only person I’ve ever known to have it was my birth mother and hers was very mild, so it is kind of nice for some reason to know that I’m not the only one dealing with this ****, even though in a way, if I could take all of yours away so you didn’t have to deal with it and have to go back to being the only one, I probably would. So take it easy and have a good day, week or year.

Thanks—SkinE for checking that person they needed it, I’m really glad someone called them on their b.s. properly before I ever even arrived here. Oprah is a business woman one of the few on the forbes list and she is going to go where her market researchers think the gold is, that is how she got where she is today. So this person was also discounting her already proven "business sense", she is no one hit wonder, she's been around the block a few times in bussiness she has chosen for herself. So really they were trying to insult her intelligence, which is clearly someone trying to cover up the fact that they cannot deal with a rich and powerful black woman. And even if she wasn't black they would say she only cares about women.

But at least the person who wrote to Oprah was being productive and trying to help in the situation at hand, so what if it's a long shot, I don't see people trying to jump on someone who buys a lottery ticket every once in a while, because lets face it everyonce in a while someone actually makes the shot from half court at the buzzer. You can begrudge someone for having hope---because with out hope what are you left with.