Nutritional supplement effective, safe for acne

Celebration, Fla. - A new proprietary supplement consisting of vitamins, minerals and an herb recently achieved an approximately 50 percent reduction in non-cystic acne lesions in a small trial.

In the trial, a private practitioner, based here, treated 12 patients for 60 days. He gave each patient three tablets daily of a patent-pending supplement before each meal. It contains the following ingredients:

Seven patients ultimately completed the study.

"One is that the global acne assessment scale (GAAS) decreased nearly 50 percent (from 3.7 to 1.9) by the end of the study."

After two months, the mean number of inflammatory lesions decreased from 25.9 to 11.4 per patient (p = .004; 95 percent CI). During the same period, the number of noninflammatory lesions per patient fell from 39.6 to 20.6 (p = .036; 95 percent CI) (Goodless, DR. Poster presentation. American Academy of Dermatology Academy '05, Chicago, July 20-24, 2005.).

"To treat noninflammatory lesions such as comedones," he says, "one expects to have to use something topical like Retin-A (Ortho Neutrogena), microdermabrasion or some other sort of procedure. That we were able to reduce comedones from the inside out is interesting and somewhat unique."

Equally encouraging, he says, are patients' satisfaction scores.

"Patients compared the study supplement to all previous treatments they had received, and they liked it about four times as much," Dr. Goodless says.

On the Likert scale, subjects' level of satisfaction averaged 7.9 (on a 10 point scale) compared with a 2.3 average for previously used treatments.

Dr. Goodless furthermore asked patients to assess acne's effect on their quality of life through a questionnaire that addressed impact in nine psychosocial aspects. In this analysis, psychosocial impact decreased from 6.4 mean total points (of 27 maximum) to 1.0. Likewise, a Physicians Global Assessment reflected moderate improvement at study's end.

"As a practicing dermatologist," he says, "I see a lot of patients who don't want to take antibiotics. Many have preconceived notions that antibiotics might alter their immune system, for example. These aren't necessarily true," but patients believe them.

"Acne patients, as well as their moms and dads, prefer avoiding an oral antibiotic if they don't need one. And Accutane (Roche) is very powerful, has side effects, and is not really indicated for patients with mild to moderate non-cystic acne," Dr. Goodless says.

He says the need for an effective treatment that avoids problems associated with existing acne drugs coincided with his ongoing interest in nutritional supplements.

"I decided to see if there are any nutritional supplements that have ever been shown to help acne," Dr. Goodless says. "There was actually a lot of data, even in peer-reviewed dermatology journals, that showed certain vitamins and minerals will improve acne."

Mining this data yielded the seven vitamins and minerals Dr. Goodless uses.