Oral antibiotics used to treat acne are linked to symptoms of sore throat, according to a study by researchers with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published Online First in the Archives of Dermatology , one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
Oral antibiotics used to treat acne are linked to symptoms of sore throat, according to a study by researchers with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, published Online First in the Archives of Dermatology , one of the JAMA/Archives journals.
"Our studies show that the odds of developing self-reported pharyngitis (sore throat) is more than three times baseline in patients receiving oral antibiotics for acne versus the odds for those who are not receiving oral antibiotics," the authors conclude. "The true clinical importance of these findings needs to be evaluated further by prospective studies."
David J. Margolis, MD, PhD, professor of Dermatology and Epidemiology and colleagues with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted two concurrent studies of students (a cross-sectional study and a longitudinal study) to examine the association between antibiotics used to treat acne and sore throat. The authors also examined the association between oral antibiotics and colonization rates of group A streptococcus, a form of bacteria responsible for most cases of streptococcal illness, as previous research has shown a link between oral antibiotics and higher rates of group a strep.
The authors found that the use of oral antibiotics was strongly associated with a health care evaluation for sore throat. Of students receiving oral antibiotic treatment, 11.3 percent reported having a sore throat. Conversely, sore throats were reported by 3.3 percent of students not receiving oral antibiotics. Additionally, no association with sore throat was noted for those who used a topical antibiotic for acne. The authors found that less than 1 percent of participants were colonized by group A strep, indicating that it was not associated with sore throat in this setting.
Previous studies from Dr. Margolis and colleagues at Penn found that long-term use of antibiotics to treat acne counter-intuitively decreased the prevalence of colonization of another bacteria, S. aureus, by nearly 70 percent, and didn't cause increased resistance to medications.
For more information on these studies, please visit the JAMA/Archives news release on the sore throat study and the S. aureus colonization study.
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