Are Costly Acne Medicines More Effective?

The question are costly acne medicines more effective? is indeed an interesting one. Some studies have already been conducted to find out whether costly medicines are more effective than the cheap ones.

To answer the first question, no single agent can be considered as most suitable for all types of acne or for all patients for that matter. The choice of therapeutic agents differs according to the type of acne. For more details, see the acne best treatment principles.

acne treatment guidelines

Selected Acne Products
Coming to the second question “Are costly acne medicines more effective”, NO! Costly acne medicines need not be more effective than cheaper acne medicines and vice versa. In a study reported in the December 18 2004 issue of Lancet a team of instigators compared five different acne regimens in 649 patients with mild to moderate acne.

The patients were treated and followed with the following regimens:

Twice-daily oral oxytetracycline with topical placebo,
Daily oral minocycline with topical placebo,
Twice-daily topical 5% benzoyl peroxide with oral placebo,
Twice-daily topical 5% benzoyl peroxide plus 3% erythromycin with oral placebo, or
Topical erythromycin in the morning and benzoyl peroxide in the night with oral placebo.

They found moderate improvement of acne with all the regimens. There was very little difference among treatment groups, although those using erythromycin had the greatest improvement. In all groups, most improvement occurred during the first 6 weeks of treatment. Tetracycline resistance affected the efficacy of the tetracycline regimens, but erythromycin resistance did not impair the efficacy of erythromycin ointments. The most cost-effective treatments were topical benzoyl peroxide alone and benzoyl peroxide alternating with erythromycin, although topical benzoyl peroxide alone caused the most skin irritation.

Hence, if you find the cost of treatment too high you can always ask your dermatologist for cheaper and equally (or more) effective alternatives.

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