Treatment Of Severe Acne May Increase Risk Of Suicide Attempts

Treatment Of Severe Acne May Increase Risk Of Suicide Attempts.
Severe acne may significantly enhancement suicide risk, and patients taking isotretinoin (Accutane) for the pellicle influence should be monitored for at least a year after treatment ends, Swedish researchers report. "Treatment with Accutane truly entails an increased risk of suicide attempts," said lead researcher Anders Sundstrom, a pharmacoepidemiologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. However, recess caused by the acne, rather than the hypnotic itself, is probably the culprit.

The risk of suicide is very small. There could be one suicide go among 2300 people taking Accutane, and that assumes that the drug caused the suicide attempt. For the study, published online Nov 12,2010 in BMJ, Sundstrom's gang collected matter on 5756 people treated for severe acne with Accutane from 1980 to 1989. The middling age of the men was 22; the average age of women was 27.

Linking these patients to hospitalization and ruin records from 1980 to 2001, they found that 128 of the patients were hospitalized because of a suicide attempt. Suicide attempts increased in the several years before Accutane was started, but the highest gamble was seen in the six months after treatment ended, Sundstrom's collection found.

It's possible that patients whose skin improved became distraught if their social biography didn't benefit, the researchers speculated. Also, Accutane takes time to work and acne can get worse before it gets better. "It takes a long time to get rid of the acne, and for the self-image to get better might bilk even a longer time".