Tazarotene equally effective, safe for acne treatment among adult women

Tazarotene treatment for acne demonstrated comparable efficacy and safety among women aged 18 years and older and aged 25 years and older, according to a study published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.

“Acne is often regarded as an adolescent condition, but its frequency among adults is increasingly common,” Linda Stein Gold, MD, of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and colleagues wrote.

They continued that, while there is no age that defines a cutoff between adolescent and adult acne, women aged 18 to 24 years may be considered in a “transition period” and acne in women aged older than 25 years may be considered “adult acne” and a continuation of post-adolescent acne, although acne can also present for the first time in adulthood or return after adolescent acne has cleared.

The researchers enrolled and randomly assigned 1,614 patients with acne into two phase 3 double-blind studies. The post hoc analysis included 774 women aged 18 years and older, 335 of whom were aged 25 years or older, as well as a vehicle safety population of 717 women, 320 of whom were aged 25 years or older.

Compared with patients in the vehicle group, inflammatory lesions decreased over time among patients in the younger age group (60.6% vs. 53.7%; P < .01) and the older age group (60.9% vs. 57.3%) after 12 weeks of treatment. Additionally, noninflammatory lesion reductions were greater after treatment compared with vehicle at week 12 among both the younger (59% vs. 48.4%; P < 0.01) and older age groups (61.1% vs. 48.8%; P < .01).

The researchers also found that there was a greater improvement in quality of life after 12 weeks of treatment compared with the vehicle group. Among those in the 18 to 24 year treatment group, the mean Acne-specific quality of life questionnaire scores ranged from 6.6 to 10.9 compared with 6.2 to 9.5 in the vehicle group (P < .05). Those in the 25 years and older treatment group also scored higher with 8.1 to 10.7 vs. 7.5 to 10 in the vehicle group, except in the role-social domain (6.4 vs. 6.7).

Regarding safety and tolerability, rates of treatment-emergent adverse events were similar in both age groups ( 18 years, 32.7% vs. 25 years, 33.3%). Most were mild or moderate, and the events that occurred in 2% or more of patients included pain, dryness, exfoliation and erythema at the application site.

“Beyond clinical efficacy, it is important that acne therapy leads to improvements in patients’ quality of life,” Stein Gold and colleagues wrote. “This may be of particular importance for adult females, who have been shown to experience greater negative impacts of acne on quality of life than adult males or adolescent females.”

They concluded that while treatment-related tolerability may be of particular concern for women aged 25 years or older, the rate of application-site irritation with tazarotene was less the 1% in the older age group.

“This cosmetically elegant tazarotene lotion formulation is a well-studied and important treatment option for all patients, particularly adult females,” the researchers wrote.