Photodynamic Therapy Compared to Adapalene 0.1% Gel Plus Doxycycline in the Treatment of Acne Vulgaris

Overview

* Acne vulgaris is a common inflammatory skin disease that affects more than 85% of teens and some people may continue throughout adulthood. * Topical retinoids related to oral antibiotics are considered first-line treatment of moderate inflammatory acne. * Recently, photodynamic therapy (PDT) with a photosensitizer, 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) or methyl aminolevulinate (MAL), has proven useful in the management of inflammatory acne. Although progress has been made in the study of photodynamic therapy for acne, to date, no study has compared PDT with standard and well-validated pharmaceutical treatments and with the current recommended therapy for most types of acne combination therapy with a topical retinoid plus one or more antimicrobial agents. Hypothesis * PDT with the photosensitizer ALA will be effective and safe for the treatment of moderate facial inflammatory acne. * The ALA-PDT is more effective than conventional therapy with oral antibiotics and topical retinoids in the treatment of moderate inflammatory acne with faster action at 12 weeks of follow-up.

* There will be a randomized, controlled, single blind comparison study of PDT with 5-aminolevulinic acid (ALA) 20% versus conventional therapy consisting of topical 0.1% adapalene plus doxycycline 100 mg/day orally in patients with moderate inflammatory acne. * Be sought from all patients written informed consent prior to study entry. * For sample size calculation, we assumed that the correlation is the same in both groups and is relatively low (0.01), the number of lesions per subject is equal in both groups with a mean of 100 and low variance, which take 1 control per case and that. Whereas the percentage of improvement in the control group is 0.6 and expected in the treatment group is 0.7 yields a sample size of 23 patients in the treatment group and 23 new controls. Interventions: Patients will be randomized to receive: 1. ALA-PDT: In 23 patients applied 20% ALA solution in the affected area for 1.5 hours. Subsequently irradiated with noncoherent red light (lamp Waldmann PDT 1200; wavelength 590-700 nm) with irradiance of 70 mW/cm2 and total dose or fluence of 37 J/cm2 for 7-9 minutes. From the sixth week will begin nightly topical adapalene 0.1% gel. 2. Standard therapy: In 23 patients applied topical adapalene 0.1% gel at night for 12 weeks plus doxycycline 100 mg / day for 6 weeks.