Abstract
Background: Photodynamic therapy had made great progress in the treatment of acne vulgaris. However, there is no meta-analysis on the effectiveness and safety of red light therapy for acne vulgaris.
Objective: To assess the efficiency and safety of red light therapy for acne vulgaris.
Methods: PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and Web of Science were retrieved to identify related studies. The outcomes were expressed as improvement in the average percentages of inflammatory acne lesions (MPRI) and non-inflammatory acne lesions (NMPRI), as well as the improvement of acne lesions respectively after treatment.
Results: 13 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) consisting of 422 participants were included. There was no significant difference in the average number of non-inflammatory
lesions (weighted mean difference (WMD = −0.527; 95% CI,-3.055~2.001; p = 0.683).
Moreover, there was no statistically significant difference in the average number of inflammatory lesions (WMD =0.701; 95% CI, −0.809~2.212; p =0.363). In the subgroup analysis of the outcome changes in comedones, pustules, papules, and total lesions, it was found that red light therapy elicited no significant superiority compared with other conventional treatment methods (WMD = −1.125; 95% CI, −3.122~0.873; p = 0.270). Adverse events of the red light group were generally mild or even completely non-existent.
Conclusion: There was no statistically significant difference between red light therapy and traditional therapies in terms of efficacy. However, due to the heterogeneity of the researches and the lack of large sample size, the result of this study needs to be interpreted with caution.
KEYWORDS
acne vulgaris, light therapy, meta-analysis, red light