This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on ISI (25)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Dermatology, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

A Placebo-Controlled Trial

Doris M. Gruber, MD; Michael O. Sator, MD; Elmar A. Joura, MD; Eva Maria Kokoschka, MD; Georg Heinze, MSc; Johannes C. Huber, MD, PhD

Arch Dermatol. 1998;134:459-463.

Objective  To evaluate the clinical and hormonal response of topically applied cyproterone acetate, oral cyproterone acetate, and placebo lotion in women with acne.

Design  Placebo-controlled, randomized study.

Setting  Patients were recruited from the Institute of Endocrine Cosmetics, Vienna, Austria.

Patients  Forty women with acne.

Interventions  Treatment with oral medication consisting of 0.035 mg of ethinyl estradiol and 2 mg of cyproterone acetate (n=12), 20 mg of topical cyproterone acetate lotion (n=12), and placebo lotion (n=16) was offered. Patients were assessed monthly for 3 months.

Main Outcome Measures  Clinical grading according to acne severity and lesion counts as well as determinations of serum cyproterone acetate concentrations.

Results  After 3 months of therapy with topical cyproterone acetate, the decrease of mean facial acne grade from 1.57 to 0.67 was significantly better (P<.05) compared with placebo (which showed a change from 1.57 to 1.25), but not compared with oral medication (1.56 to 0.75) (P>.05). Lesion counts also decreased from 35.9 to 9.1 in the topical cyproterone acetate group compared with oral medication (45.4 to 15.5) (P>.05) and placebo (38.2 to 23.1) (P<.05). After topical cyproterone acetate treatment, serum cyproterone acetate concentrations were 10 times lower than those found after oral cyproterone acetate intake.

Conclusions  The therapeutic effect of topically applied cyproterone acetate for acne treatment was clearly demonstrated. Topically applied sexual steroids in combination with liposomes are as effective as oral antiandrogen medication in acne treatment, while reducing the risk of adverse effects and avoiding high serum cyproterone acetate concentrations.

From the Division of Gynecological Endocrinology and Reproductive Medicine (Drs Gruber, Sator, and Huber), Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Division of Gynecology (Dr Joura), Department of Dermatology (Dr Kokoschka), and Department of Computer Sciences (Mr Heinze), General Hospital, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

The Response of Skin Disease to Stress: Changes in the Severity of Acne Vulgaris as Affected by Examination Stress
Chiu et al.
Arch Dermatol 2003;139:897-900.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT