The majority of antibiotic courses for adult acne line up with recommended guidelines for treatment duration, according to results of a retrospective cohort study of 17,448 courses of antibiotics in adults aged 21 years and older.
Chelsey E. Straight, a student at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pa., and her colleagues reviewed data from the MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounters database and determined that about 85% of the courses of antibiotics for adult acne matched guidelines for treatment duration. The most common course duration was 90-179 days, and the mean costs of generic and branded medications were $103.77 and $1,421.61, respectively.
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons/Kinan Ayu/ Creative Commons license
The study was limited by several factors, including a lack of information about acne severity, patient characteristics, and clinical outcomes, the researchers noted.
However, a “mean savings of $592.26 per person could result if prolonged courses met guidelines,” they wrote.
Find the study online in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (2015;72:822-27).