The Clinical Observations Of Treating Acne Vulgaris Using Shu-Gan-Qing-Re Rreatment And This Treatment's Effects To Patients' Serum Testosterone Levels

Acne vulgaris is a common and prevalent skin disease. It is an inflammatory chronical skin condition involving with hair follicles and sebaceous glands. These oil-producing glands associated with the tiny hairs which cover the face and body are the site of the primary changes seen in acne vulgaris. The condition is characterised by outbreaks of lesions better known as acnes, papules, pustules, nodes, cysts and scars etc. People ages from 15 to 30 years old are commonest to attract acne vulgaris.Objectives: The objectives are to validate the clinical curative effects of a Chinese medicine treatment called Shu-Gan-Qing-Re to treat acne vulgaris, also to discover the mechanism of this treatment by comparing the serum testosterone levels before and after the treatment.Method: Total 81 acne vulgaris patients are selected from the No. 1 teaching hospital of university of traditional Chinese medicine for this research purpose. These patients were randomly divided into two groups. One group had 54 patients who were treated using Shu-Gan-Qing-Re decoction, so this group were called Shu-Gan-Qing-Re decoction group. The rest 27 patients were in the group called doxycycline group, they were used doxycycline treatment. The skin impairment levels and serum testosterone levels of all the patients were measured before and after a four-week treatment. The statistics of t test and x~2 test of the collected results were calculated using the software SPSS version 12. 0 for windows.Results: The effective rate in Shu-Gan-Qing-Re decoction group is 83. 33% which is similar in doxycycline group. The serum testosterone levels collected in Shu-Gan-Qing-Re decoction group decrease after the four-week treatment, whereas there is no visible change of serum testosterone levels in doxycycline group before and after the treatment.Conclusion: The research results show that there is no visible difference in the curative effect and the effective rate between Shu-Gan-Qing-Re decoction group and doxycycline group. So Shu-Gan-Qing-Re treatment is as efficient as doxycycline treatment for acne vulgaris. Moreover, Shu-Gan-Qing-Re treatmentcauses the decrease of serum testosterone levels in the acne vulgaris patients, so the mechanism of Shu-Gan-Qing-Re treatment is relative to adjusting the patients' serum testosterone levels.