NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Women with moderate acne may benefit from a low-dose oral contraceptive containing drospirenone and ethinyl estradiol, according to results of a multicenter trial conducted in the US.
"Androgen overproduction can be a major contributory factor to acne," the investigators note in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Androgens are typical male hormones such as testosterone, but women also have them in small amounts, just as men have low levels of female hormones such as estrogen.
Drospirenone is the only synthetic progesterone compound available in the US that is an anti-androgen, the researchers explain, while ethinyl estradiol triggers the production of a compound that binds to sex hormones.
For their study, the research team led by Dr. J. Michael Maloney from Cherry Creek Research, Inc., in Denver, enrolled 536 female subjects with facial acne. They ranged in age from 14 to 45 years old.
The subjects were randomly assigned to take the low-dose oral contraceptive or an inactive "placebo" pill; 211 women in the treatment group and 192 in the placebo group completed the 6-month trial.
The number of acne lesions dropped by 46 percent in the drospirenone/estradiol group compared with 31 percent in the placebo group. Participants in the active treatment group were three times more likely to be rated as having "clear" or "almost clear" skin by investigators.
The treatment regimen was well tolerated, the authors report, with no thromboembolic events or abnormal laboratory findings during the trial.
Maloney's group notes that this trial was one of two identically designed studies, and that "the consistency of the positive results between the two studies led to the recent FDA approval of this formulation for the treatment of moderate acne vulgaris in women who desire an oral contraceptive for birth control."
SOURCE: Obstetrics and Gynecology, October 2008.
