Light Therapy - Colored

BACKGROUND: Many acne patients improve after exposure to sunlight and there are many reports about the efficacy of blue light phototherapy on acne lesions. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to evaluate efficacy and safety of blue light treatment versus topical benzoyl peroxide 5% formulation in patients with acne grades II and III. METHODS: Sixty volunteers with facial acne were included and evaluated in 5 visits: the first one for screening, another 3 held on days 7, 14 and 28 of treatment, and the last one after 14 days of the end of treatment. Thirty of them were irradiated with Blue Light (8 times, twice a week) and the other thirty were treated with topical Benzoyl Peroxide 5% formulation, auto-applied twice a day, every day. We assessed the severity of acne by counting the lesions and analyzing the photographs. RESULTS: The improvement achieved by the blue light was the same as the one with benzoyl peroxide, regardless of the type of lesion (p 0.05). Otherwise, the side effects were less frequent in the group treated with blue light. CONCLUSIONS: Blue light irradiation was as effective as benzoyl peroxide in acne treatment grades II and III but there were fewer side effects.