Acne patients who are taking oral antibiotics are more likely to suffer from pharyngitis, according to the results of a new study in Archives of Dermatology.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, led by Paul H. Edelstein, MD, of the departments of pathology and laboratory medicine, examined 15 students with acne who were being treated with oral antibiotics and 130 students with acne who were not. In the cross-sectional study, two-thirds of the acne patients receiving oral antibiotics (10/15 patients) reported an episode of pharyngitis in the past 30 days, compared to 47 of the 130 acne patients not receiving oral antibiotics. The unadjusted odds ratio (OR) (95% CI) associating current oral antibiotic use in acne patients with a self-reported episode of pharyngitis was 3.53 (95% CI, 1.14-10.95), according to the Archives abstract.
“Our studies show that that the odds of reporting pharyngitis is more than 3 times baseline in patients receiving oral antibiotics for acne vs. those who are not receiving oral antibiotics,” the researchers report.
The study also found that the use of oral antibiotics was not associated with group A streptococcus.
“The true clinical importance of these findings needs to be evaluated further by prospective studies, but this finding is not associated with group A streptococcus,” the researchers write in Archives.
