Minocycline acne treatment

Minocycline acne treatment is one of the most popular forms of treating severe acne. The medication kills the acne bacteria better than most other drugs available and has a general anti-inflammatory effect. Using minocycline can noticeably reduce the amount of pimples as well as the redness of the remaining ones.

What is mynocycline?

Minocycline is one of the best antibiotics for acne treatment, developed in 1970s. It is sold under the names of Minocin, Dynacin and Vectrin. Minocycline acne treatment is very popular in cases of severe acne, but when there is no need for any kind of surgery yet.

Usage

The treatment usually starts from taking mynocycline only at bedtime for five or six days to let the organism get used to the medication. During this time it is possible to suffer from minor side effects of mynocycline – acne will vanish, but you may experience periods of dizziness and headaches for a few hours after taking the pills. This is usually over in under a week. Then you can start the full-scale minocycline acne treatment.

After the initial period you will not only take pills (this time usually at your meals), but you will also use topical acne cream to speed up the recovery process. While taking the antibiotic, it is also advised to have about 500mg of Vitamin C daily, as it prevents some possible side effects minocycline has.

Possible side effects

As most antibiotics treatments, minocycline acne treatment isn’t perfectly safe. While much safer than penicillin or even ibuprofen, it still has a few possible side effects.

1. Dizziness and headaches

The most common side effects that show up during mynocycline acne treatment are dizziness and headaches. In most cases they vanish after a few days’ therapy, but if the don’t, you should consider taking the antibiotic pills at a lower dose or to stop using it entirely.

2. Hives outbreak

About one person in a hundred is allergic to mynocycline. Acne such people have will be cured, but after two or three weeks they will experience serious hives outbreak. If this happens it is strongly advised to leave the pills and find some other medication to replace minocycline.

3. Minocycline build-up

As minocycline builds up in the body, after some time it will change color of some parts of skin, making them look similarly to big acne scars or bruises. It is more probable if maximum dose is taken for more than a year. The effect will vanish, but very slowly – usually after about a year from the moment of stopping minocycline acne treatment. Recent researches show that taking Vitamin C during the treatment greatly reduces the danger of skin color change.

Serious Side effects

In less than 1:10 000 cases two very rare side effects develop.

1. hypersensitivity lupus/hepatitis

The hypersensitivity causes severe joint pains. If you experience that, you have to stop the treatment at once.

2. pseudotumor cerebri

The last and the most serious of all minocycline side effects is pseudotumor cerebri – the accumulation of fluid around the brain. It causes continuous headache and, later, increasing problems with vision.

Fortunately both problems resolve over time, but it is a very slow process.