Port wine stains are red birthmarks that without treatment persist for a lifetime. They are frequently found on the face and can be conspicuous and disfiguring, negatively impacting social interactions for these patients. Treating Port wine stains is difficult. The standard of care is to use laser treatment, but over 80% of patients fail to completely clear despite multiple treatments. The growth of additional blood vessels (angiogenesis) following the Laser treatment is likely an important factor in why these lesions persist despite therapy.
Imiquimod is a topical cream that affects the immune response and has been noted to inhibit blood vessel formation. It has been used to successfully treat other vascular growths such as hemangiomas. The research can use imiquimod cream 5% cream apply to port wine stains after laser therapy to improve lightening of port wine stains. The imiquimod 5% cream cream apply to Port wine stains everyday for 8 weeks.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE
Enrollment
27
Beckman Laser Institute Medical and Surgical Cilnic
Irvine, California, United States
Change From Baseline in a* and E at 8 Weeks
Change in a\* and ΔE is a way to quantify PWS treatment outcome: a\* is the erythema of the vascular lesions and varies from +60 for green to -60 for red with a value of +9.28 for Normal Skin. Higher a\* values indicates a greater reduction in erythema hence better treatment outcome. ΔE detects all three dimensions of colorspace (L\*a\*b\*) and represents the difference in color between normal and PWS skin. Range of ΔE is 0 to 100. Higher values indicates improved treatment efficacy by greater skin color improvement.
Time frame: 8 weeks baseline
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