Acne: The battle of facing acne

Acne is a problem for everyone. First, because it is difficult to accept it; and second, because you have to figth against this skin disorder and social beauty parameters too. However, everything goes worst when a young girl or boy suffers acne, since classmates are cuel and do not watch themselves.

Something similar happened to Chelsea Fahey a girl who had always been celebrated for her looks, since she was a child model and won more than 10 beauty pageant titles, eventually going on win the Miss Teen America 2004 crown.

Her nigthmare began in seventh grade, when she fought an embarrassing battle against severe acne. I would hide my face with my hair, and I would look down so I wouldn't see people's reactions and I wouldn't have to deal with the pain of seeing people wincing, remembers Chelsea, who is now 18.

Acne affects personality and emotions of people. Although it is a common problem, it devastates even who are stronger. According to the Academy of Dermatology, almost every teen aged 12 to 17 will suffer from some form of acne, but 40 per cent of those will develop severe acne. They will not get pimples; they will get cysts that can cause scarring and emotional devastation.

I didn't make very many friends, not wanting to date anyone. I didn't want anyone to touch my face, not looking in mirrors. It was really sad, tells Chelsea.

She even covered all the mirrors in her house, so she could not see herself. Chelsea tried everything in treatment and medication, such as pills, creams, different face washes, medicated makeup, but nothing seemed to work.

Chelsea refused to talk about the problem, even to her mother. She thought that if she talked about it, she was admitting that she had a problem. And she didn't want to have any more problems than any normal teenager has.

Under Chelsea's mother point of view, she seemed to be fighting a losing battle and retreated further into herself, but the first and main thing Chelsea got to do, it was to admit that she had a problem.

Acne: Rambazole Can Be A Good Medication Against Acne In Future

A study with Rambazole, a novel retinoic acid metabolism-blocking agent (RAMBA), determined that 94 per cent of subjects -with moderate-to-severe acne treated with 1 mg of oral Rambazole once daily for 12 consecutive weeks- experienced reduction in total acne lesion count of more than 50 per cent and 35 per cent were considered "cleared or almost cleared.

This study points to the production of this medication on future, since Barrier Therapeutics, Inc. reported positive Phase 2a data for its oral formulation of Rambazole (TM) in the treatment of moderate to severe acne and positive biological activity data for its topical formulation of this product.

Experts explain that a subject must have had more than 90 per cent reduction in total lesion count to be considered “cleared or almost cleared”. According to their report, inflammatory and non-inflammatory lesions responded equally well to treatment. There were no serious effects related to the treatment with this new component. Only some patients of the group in study experienced dryness of skin and lips as non-serious side effects.

Geert Cauwenbergh, Ph.D., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Barrier Therapeutics, Inc. explained that “these positive Phase 2a results indicate that oral Rambazole is active in moderate to severe inflammatory acne, and that depending on the outcome of future, full scale clinical trials, this drug may one day fill the need for safe and effective oral treatments for moderate and severe acne. These results further build on our previously announced promising clinical data for oral Rambazole for psoriasis”.

Acne: Laser, a good therapy for acne without side effects

Laser appears to be a good therapy for acne without side effects. Lasers and light-based systems have become one of the more common modalities to treat a wide variety of skin disorders, including acne vulgaris, during the past ten years.

A lot of patients do not respond adequately or develop side effects with the various oral and topical treatments available for the treatment of acne. Hence, the growing demand by patients who suffered from acne for a faster, safer, and side-effect-free novel therapy.

The Dermatology and Lasers Clinic from Tel Aviv Msq, Caesarea, Israel, studied this concerning situation in order to address the role of light therapy in the armamentarium of treatments for acne vulgaris, to discuss photobiology aspects and biomedical optics, to review current technologies of laser/light-based devices, to review the clinical experience and results, and to outline clinical guidelines and treatment considerations, as they reported.

After a series of clinical trials, results show that 85 per cent of the patients show an important quantitative reduction in at least 50 per cent of their lesions after four biweekly treatments. Approximately 20 per cent of cases demonstrate that acne eradication may reach 90 per cent. Three months after the last treatment, clearance is approximately 70 per cent to 80 per cent. Meanwhile, the non-respondent rate is 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

According to researchers, laser and light-based therapies are a safe and effective modality for the treatment of mild to moderate inflammatory acne vulgaris. After comparing to the effects of oral antibiotics, amelioration of acne by light therapy offers faster resolution and fewer side effects and leads to patient satisfaction.

Acne: Common Illness May Be Increased By Usage of Antibiotics for Acne

According to experts based in last researches, the usage of antibiotics for acne may increase common illness or diseases, what it was demonstrated by an experiment in which a group of individuals that was treated with antibiotics for acne for more than six weeks (all of hem were volunteers). After the experiment, this group was more than twice as likely to develop an upper respiratory tract infection within one year as individuals with acne who were not treated with antibiotics.

The overuse of antibiotics, explain experts, will lead to resistant organisms and an increase in infectious illness. There have been, however, few studies about people who have actually been exposed to antibiotics for long periods and there the importance of this one.

According to experts, the ideal people to study consequences of using antibiotics for acne are patients with acne (an inflammatory disease involving the sebaceous glands of the skin; characterized by papules or pustules or comedones) , who use for long-term antibiotic therapy, representing a unique and natural population in which to study the effects of long-term antibiotic use.

A group of experts from the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, identified individuals diagnosed with acne between the years 1987 and 2002, aged 15 to 35 years, in a medical database in the United Kingdom (UK).

The researchers searched information such as how often individuals were likely to see a physician, and compared the incidence of a common infectious illness, upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), in individuals treated with antibiotics for acne and those whose acne was not treated with these medications.

Experts reported that “within the first year of observation, 15.4 per cent of the patients with acne had at least one URTI, and within that year, the odds of a URTI developing among those receiving antibiotic treatment were 2.15 times greater than among those who were not receiving antibiotic treatment”.