Clinical evidence on the efficacy and safety of an antioxidant optimized 1.5% salicylic acid (SA) cream in the treatment of facial acne: an open, baseline-controlled clinical study

BACKGROUND/PURPOSE: Acne pathogenesis is multifactorial and includes inflammation. Combining active ingredients targeting multiple components of acne pathogenesis may yield optimal outcomes. This study investigates the safety and efficacy of an antioxidant optimized topical salicylic acid (SA) 1.5% cream containing natural skin penetration enhancers in combination with antioxidant activity for treatment of facial acne. METHODS: A total of 20 patients with facial acne, aged 19-32 years (2 males, 18 females; mean age 26.1 +/- 3.2), were enrolled. Patients were treated with topical 1.5% SA cream and instructed to apply the cream as a thin film over the affected area twice daily (in the morning and evening) for 4 weeks. Inflammatory severity, numbers of papules and pustules were evaluated by investigators at day 0 and weekly, and patients ranked their improvement. RESULTS: In all, 95% of patients improved: 20% had complete clearing, 30% had significantly improved, 15% had moderate improvement, 30% had mild improved, and there was no response in 5% of the patients by 4 weeks of treatment. No side effects were observed. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates the efficacy and safety of this optimized topical 1.5% SA cream containing natural skin penetration enhancers in combination with antioxidant activity when applied twice daily for the reduction of facial acne; in particular, it is most effective for mild-to-moderate acne

Sunburn protection as a function of sunscreen application thickness differs between high and low SPFs

Background Sunscreens are an important component of healthy sun-protection behavior. To achieve satisfactory protection, sunscreens must be applied consistently, evenly and correctly. Consumers do not apply sunscreen properly and, therefore, do not achieve the protection indicated by the label 'sun protection factor' (SPF). The objective of the present study was to determine the actual sun(burn) protection given by a range of sunscreen application thickness levels for both low and high SPF formulas. Subjects and Methods Forty study subjects were recruited from each of three geographical regions in China. Sunscreens with label SPFs of 4, 15, 30, and 55 were tested at application levels of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 mg/cm2 in three laboratories using a standard SPF protocol. Results Sunscreens with lower SPFs (4 and 15) showed a linear dose-response relationship with application level, but higher SPF (30 and 55) product protection was exponentially related to application thickness. Conclusion Sunscreen protection is not related in one uniform way to the amount of product applied to human skin. Consumers may achieve an even lower than expected sunburn protection from high SPF products than from low SPF sunscreens

Assistant Diagnosis of Basal Cell Carcinoma and Seborrheic Keratosis in Chinese Population Using Convolutional Neural Network

Objectives. To evaluate CNN models’ performance of identifying the clinical images of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and seborrheic keratosis (SK) and to compare their performance with that of dermatologists. Methods. We constructed a Chinese skin diseases dataset which includes 1456 BCC and 1843 SK clinical images and the corresponding medical history. We evaluated the performance using four mainstream CNN structures and transfer learning techniques. We explored the interpretability of the CNN model and compared its performance with that of 21 dermatologists. Results. The fine-tuned InceptionResNetV2 achieved the best performance, with an accuracy and area under the curve of 0.855 and 0.919, respectively. Further experimental results suggested that the CNN model was not only interpretable but also had a performance comparable to that of dermatologists. Conclusions. This study is the first on the assistant diagnosis of BCC and SK based on the proposed dataset. The promising results suggested that CNN model’s performance was comparable to that of expert dermatologists

Photodynamic therapy combined with surgery versus Mohs micrographic surgery for the treatment of difficult-to-treat basal cell carcinoma: a retrospective clinical study

Background Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) is the preferable surgery for difficult -to-treat basal cell carcinoma (BCC) but is an expensive, labor-intensive, and time-consuming technique. The aim of this study is to compare the efficacy and safety of photodynamic therapy combined with surgery(S-PDT) versus Mohs micrographic surgery (MMS) for the treatment of difficult-to-treat BCC. Methods This was a retrospective, comparative study. A total of 32 patients, 16 patients with 48 lesions, were treated with S-PDT, and the other 16 patients with 17 lesions treated by MMS were enrolled in this study. Follow-up was at least 36 months posttreatment. Results The recurrence rate was no statistical difference between the S-PDT and MMS (p = 1.000, Fishers exact test). The median follow-up was 42.5 months (range 36–63 months). The mean healing time in the S-PDT [17.9 d (SD 9.8)] is longer than in MMS [7.5 d (SD 1.5)] during follow-up (p＜.001, Independent T-test). On the whole, the cosmetic outcome of patients in S-PDT was statistically no significant difference with that in MMS according to a 4-point scale (p = .719, chi-squared test). Conclusions S-PDT is a safe, effective, and novel cosmetic treatment, which holds the potential to be an alternative treatment to MMS for some cases