Efficacy of ALA‐PDT vs blue light in the treatment of acne

Abstract

From this study, the trend for ALA-PDT with blue light to be superior to blue light alone was observed, but it did not reach statistical significance. ALA-PDT had more side effects.

Photodynamic therapy for acne vulgaris: A critical review from basics to clinical practice

“…[12][13][14]18,23,[39][40][41][42] Of note, the desired route of ALA or MAL uptake for acne therapy may be directly into hair follicles rather than through the stratum corneum. Occlusion could perhaps lead to a less selective distribution of porphyrins; therefore, follicular uptake can be rapid and depends largely on the solvent(s) into which the drug is compounded.…”

Photodynamic Therapy and Skin Appendage Disorders: A Review

“…Permanent effects such as ulceration or scarring are rare, whereas inflammatory and pigmentary side effects may be common. Other adverse effects include erythema (common, typically reported to last 3-5 days, but occasionally up to 4 weeks), edema (common, typically 1-4 days after treatment), formation of blisters (rare), sterile pustular eruption (starting on the second or third day after treatment, lasting typically 3 days, after high-fluence red light PDT), and crusts (30% of patients, starting on the second to fourth posttreatment day), purpura, acute transient acne flare (3-4 weeks after treatment), exfoliation (4-10 days), contact hypersensitivity/irritation (rare, lasting 10 days), postinflammatory hyperpigmentation for 4 weeks to 3 months, and induction of herpes simplex eruptions in predisposed patients [18,21,23,34,36,49] . Obviously, the intensity of side effects is related to light source and light dosimetry with high-dose red light PDT being associated with higher rates of side effects.…”

“…Nevertheless, almost 16 years have passed since the first studies on ALA-PDT in acne therapy; there is still no consensus on how to perform PDT for acne treatment, and its use still remains an off-label option for acne patients [22] . Despite numerous studies on PDT in acne (mainly mild to severe acne on the face but also acne lesions on the back and acne conglobata) [1,18,20,21,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42] ( Table 1 ), they are generally difficult to compare because of the lack of controls, qualitative non-blinded methods, variable light dosimetry, and an extremely wide variation of the incubation time between drug application and light exposure. All these differences should not be neglected.…”

Photodynamic Therapy of Infectious Disease Mediated by Functionalized Fullerenes

“…The authors reported that the effects of the PDT inhibited multiple pathogenic factors of acne and suggested that it could prove an interesting treatment for the future. Akaraphanth et al (2007) also compared the use of ALA-PDT with blue light alone for the treatment of acne, demonstrating 71.1% reduction of inflamed lesion counts seen on the patient, although at high cost and with several side effects. More recently, Mei et al (2013) demonstrated rates of reductions in inflammatory lesions as high as 83.6% using the technique, with no severe side effects.…”