Acne is a skin condition that affects many people around the world. In fact, about 9.4% of the global population struggles with acne.
It’s a significant issue in the United States, too, where treating acne costs about $3 billion every year. There are plenty of medicines to treat acne, but which one works best?
Researchers have been digging into this question. They recently published a study in The Annals of Family Medicine journal. The research team studied a massive amount of data from 221 trials.
They looked at 37 different acne treatments given to 65,601 patients. The average patient was about 20 years old, and treatments typically lasted for 12 weeks.
Finding the Top Treatments
The researchers found that oral isotretinoin was the best treatment for acne. This was followed by two three-part treatments.
The first involved a skin cream with an antibiotic, a retinoid (a form of Vitamin A), and a substance called benzoyl peroxide. The second three-part treatment was similar but had an oral antibiotic instead of a cream.
The researchers also noticed that some treatments worked better on different types of acne. For example, antibiotics and retinoids worked about equally well on red, inflamed acne spots.
But antibiotics didn’t work as well on non-inflamed acne spots. That’s why doctors should be careful about using antibiotics alone to treat acne—it can lead to antibiotic resistance, which makes the medication less effective over time.
Using the Findings to Improve Acne Treatments
The results of this study are a big help for doctors who treat acne. It gives them a detailed comparison of the different treatments.
They can use this information to make better choices about which medications to use. That’s important because prescribing habits can vary widely from one country to another and between different types of doctors.
The researchers hope their study will lead to more consistent and effective acne treatment worldwide.
If you care about skin health, please read studies about eating fish linked to higher risk of skin cancer, and Vitamin B3 could help prevent skin cancers.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about vegetable oil linked to spread of cancer, and results showing fatty liver linked to this skin disease, and diets can help treat it.
The study was published in The Annals of Family Medicine.
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