JAMA: An Internet-based acne education program that included automated
counseling was not better than a standard educational website in
improving acne severity and quality of life in adolescents, according to
an article published online by JAMA Dermatology. Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory skin disease that is
prevalent among adolescents. Patient education is an important part of
managing acne along with medication. However, the effect of patient
education on clinical outcomes is not well characterized in dermatology
publications.
Researcher April W. Armstrong, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of
Colorado, Aurora, and her coauthors developed an educational website on
acne that incorporated automated online counseling to simulate
face-to-face encounters. A standard educational website on acne was also
developed for comparison. Both websites included suggestions on
preventing acne, as well as information on medications and an anti-acne
skin care routine.
The authors assessed the websites’ effect on acne severity and
quality of life in a randomized clinical trial. Ninety-eight high school
students with mild to moderate acne were enrolled, and 95 students
completed the study. The students were divided equally between the
enhanced online education program with automated counseling and the
standard website.
Students in both groups had similar acne lesion counts at the start
of the randomized trial (an average of 21.33 lesions per person in the
standard-website group vs. 25.33 lesions in the automated-counseling
group). After 12-weeks, the change in the average number of acne lesions
in the automated-counseling group (3.90 lesions) compared with the
standard-website group (0.20 lesions) was not statistically significant,
according to the results. Average improvement in quality of life scores
was not significantly different between the two groups as well.
The authors suggest their results may be explained by lower-than
expected use of the study websites. They note that “despite a lack of
differential effect between websites, our results indicate that the
automated-counseling website improved short-term skin care behaviors.”
“Therefore, interactive Internet-based education may still carry the
potential to improve long-term clinical factors, such as acne severity
and quality of life. This conclusion is significant given the importance
of discovering modern and novel techniques to deliver patient education
in dermatology,” the study concludes.