Acne Antibiotics: Uses and Dangers

Posted by John

April 23, 2010

Acne Antibiotics are a type of Acne Medication can be prescribed for stubborn cases of acne that do not respond to normal acne treatments, but are they the best course of action?

Acne occurs most commonly for teenagers and adults. A variety of treatments help prevent the condition, including a number of topical and oral antibiotics. Dermatologists may prescribe an antibiotic to cure extreme cases of acne, but the patient may wonder how they work and what the potential side effects of using antibiotics are.

There are dangers when using acne antibiotics, and that is why we would normally recommend trying an Acne Treatment that is less risky before starting to use antibiotics.

The main problem with antibiotics is that it performs a function for your immune system which it should learn to do itself. If your acne is not improving at all despite using an acne treatment than it means that your immune system is struggling to adapt and perhaps antibiotics would then be the best action. In some cases, when people do not stick closely to the instructions they can find that antibiotics have made the situation worse. This is because the antibiotics work to kill the bacteria in the skin but they start by killing the less resistant strains and over the course they should have cleared nearly all the bacteria. However, once the antibiotics have cleared enough bacteria that the symptoms of acne have gone, many patients will than stop the course. But this is a mistake as what it has done is left a small amount of very resistant bacteria that will multiply and be even harder to get rid of.

Antibiotics do not get to the route cause of acne, which is hormone change that leads to the overproduction of oil (or Sebum) in the skin. If you would like to know more about the causes of acne please visit our Why do I have acne? post or for even more detail you can go to our “Causes of Acne” post that goes into detail about the mechanics of acne.

While antibiotics are an effective treatment for acne, they should not be used as a first resort as they can work to lower your natural immune system. We would always recommend using one of our top three Acne Treatments first because they all work to kill bacteria and therefore are doing the same job as antibiotics. The difference between antibiotics and our acne treatments is that our treatments give the immune system a helping hand rather than doing its job so natural resistance to these bacteria will still improve over time.

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