New Findings Support Retin-A Benefits
An expansion of a study that demonstrated the anti-wrinkling properties of Retin-A has shown that the drug produces even more dramatic improvements when used over a longer period of time, researchers said Monday.
“The longer you use it, the better it works,” said Dr. John J. Voorhees, author of the study, speaking at a press conference during a meeting here of the American Academy of Dermatology. “It does a good job of getting rid of fine wrinkles and reducing deep furrows caused by sun damage.”
Voorhees, lead researcher for the study, which appeared last January in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., said that the new findings are based on an additional 18 months of research on 21 of the original 30 patients.
Not Yet Published
The patients received therapy for a total of 22 months, Voorhees said. The results of the expanded study have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed medical journal, but will be submitted early next year, he said.
The Food and Drug Administration has warned that the use of Retin-A can cause side effects such as redness, swelling, peeling of the skin and sensitivity to sunlight. Patients who engage in prolonged exposure to the sun are urged to avoid using the drug, researchers said. Further, the FDA said that there are no studies yet on the effects of the drug’s long-term use.
But Voorhees, who is also chairman of dermatology at the University of Michigan Medical School, said: “All patients continued to show some improvement in the condition of their skin during the study. Of course, some patients showed greater improvement than others, but the fact is that the amount of wrinkling, roughness and liver spots was reduced by a greater or lesser degree in each patient.”
In a related development, initial reports from another study indicated that Retin-A, also known by its chemical name of tretinoin, also may hold promise as a treatment for some forms of cancer, particularly in preventing premalignant skin growths from progressing into cancer.
Preliminary results from a yearlong, 10-center study show that Retin-A, when applied directly on the skin, seemed to reduce the size and number of skin lesions known as actinic keratoses, which are dry, scaly lesions that sometimes develop into squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer that is highly curable and usually not fatal.
“Studies show that tretinoin seems to have a very good anti-tumor effect,” said Dr. Barbara A. Gilchrest, chairman of dermatology at the Boston University School of Medicine, who conducted the study. “Tretinoin has enormous potential implications for treating other age-associated medical conditions.”
Retin-A, a synthetic derivative of Vitamin A called retinoic acid, was introduced more than 15 years ago as a prescription medicine for acne, which continues to be the only federally approved use of the drug. It is manufactured by Ortho Pharmaceutical Corp., a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.
The effects of Retin-A on sun-damaged skin and in treating wrinkles were first seen by Dr. Albert Kligman, the drug’s developer and emeritus professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, who found that many of his patients using the drug for acne came back raving about their skin’s improved smoothness and texture.
“I thought they were just enthusiastic patients,” he said. “But when double-blind studies were done, we found out their enthusiasm was justified because they were right.”
Unlike the initial four-month study, the expanded research was an “open-label” study, meaning that all patients received the drug. In the original “double-blind” study, half the patients received the drug and half received a worthless placebo--with neither the patients nor physicians aware of what anyone was receiving.
