Acne treatment Aczone linked to a rare blood disorder for some
A 19-year-old woman who had used Aczone — the skin gel version of the drug dapsone — for a week developed a serious condition called methemoglobinemia.
The patient showed up at a Pittsburgh emergency room with a headache, shortness of breath, and blue lips and fingers. Her symptoms initially confounded her doctors.
Although she had applied a “pea-sized” amount of Aczone to her skin twice daily for seven days before seeking care, she never mentioned that when asked if was using any medications.
“We went over all her meds and herbal supplements,” said Dr. Greg Swartzentruber, a medical toxicology fellow at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “And we couldn’t come up with a cause, even after interviewing her and her family. Aczone was just never mentioned.”
The young woman didn’t realize that “topical medicines can have systemic adverse effects, and she didn’t realize the importance of telling your doctor about everything you might be taking, including topicals,” he added.
The study authors noted that prior research has shown that dapsone pills, in very rare instances, can trigger methemoglobinemia, the abnormal production of a red blood cell protein that delivers oxygen throughout the body.
But the current case appears to be the first time that this condition has been associated with Aczone, the skin gel version of dapsone, they said.
Swartzentruber and his colleagues described the case in a letter in the Jan. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
Dapsone pills, which were also used to treat leprosy, have been available for decades. The topical 5 percent gel version known as Aczone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2005.
“It’s a very effective first- or second-line treatment for acne,” said Dr. Darrell Rigel, a clinical professor of dermatology with New York University Medical Center in New York City. “The medicine has actually been around since before World War II. It works, and anything you can apply topically to the skin is going to, by definition, be more locally targeted than an ingestible. So that’s good.”
Category: Features, Health alert
