Do Antibiotics Clear Acne?

Antibiotics are extremely effective in cleaning up acne in the short term. Antibiotics almost also lose effectiveness within six months, however, as the bacteria on your skin becomes resistant to them. A month after starting a course of antibiotics, most people experience a reduction in acne. Six months after starting a course of antibiotics, unfortunately, acne is as usually just as bad as before the treatment began. Meanwhile, long term health damage may have been caused by the reckless killing of bacteria that the body has a symbiotic relationship with.

Many acne sufferers believe that antibiotics lead to worse acne down the road, but there has been no significant research on this topic.

Before you take antibiotics to treat acne, note that research proves that people without acne have the same amount of bacteria on their skin as acne sufferers. This means that it is unlikely that the bacteria are the source of the problem. If people with clear skin have the same amount of bacteria as people with acne, bacteria seems like the wrong thing to blame.

We believe that acne is not caused by bacteria, but by the immune system overreacting to healthy bacteria on your skin and attacking it, an immune system overreaction caused by inflammation in the body. Instead of treating acne by killing bacteria, we suggest treating acne by following the guidelines on our site.

We are eager to learn more from our readers about their experiences with acne. Please tell us about your experience with antibiotics in as much detail as possible.

1 Reply to “Do Antibiotics Clear Acne?”

  1. A decade of clinical expirience with over 100 acne patients per week, made me beleive that systemic AB are temporarily efficient mainly in papulopustular acne in teenage boys. However the final outcome of any acne therapy depends on concomitant topical therapy and lifestyle changes, sometimes comedoextraction and chemical peels are “must have” in therapy. Wrong perception about ACNE in terms of treatment is when people think that acne is universal disease, not knowing that they may suffer from physiological acne, excoriated acne, cosmetic acne or some other simply folliculitis of the beard area – all of which require different treatmen approach. Moreover, antibiotic therapy is mainly used because if its ANTIINFLAMMATORY effect and killing bactria is also important because P acnes is not just a bacteria it is immunological trigger for acne inflammation ….

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