Adding automated counseling to an acne education website had no impact on improving acne severity and quality of life, but it did encourage more patients to begin or maintain an antiacne skin care routine, based on data from a randomized trial published online May 27 in JAMA Dermatology.
Patient education is the key to successful acne management, but the effects of patient education programs on clinical outcomes have not been well studied, wrote William Tuong of the University of California, Davis, and his colleagues. Mr. Tuong and his colleagues designed an educational acne website that included virtual counselors to take the place of an in-person visit with a doctor. They randomized 98 high school students aged 14-29 years with mild to moderate acne to this website or a second similar website without the virtual counseling component (JAMA Dermatology 2015 [doi:10.1001/jamadermatol.2015.0859]).
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The primary outcome of the study was the difference in acne lesion counts at baseline vs. 12 weeks after patients completed the online education program. At 12 weeks, the change in acne lesion counts was not significantly different between the automated counseling and control groups, and the total lesion count at 12 weeks was approximately 21 for both groups. In addition, the average improvement in quality of life scores was not significantly different between the groups.
However, significantly more participants in the automated counseling website group vs. the standard website group reported having “maintained or adopted a skin care regimen” at 12 weeks’ follow-up, the researchers noted.
“For some participants in this study, this alliance [with the virtual counselor] may have provided effective counseling on skin care or positive feedback that reinforced current behaviors,” they wrote.
The results were limited by the lower-than-expected use of the study websites, the researchers noted. However, the findings suggest that “interactive, Internet-based education may still carry the potential to improve long-term clinical factors, such as acne severity and quality of life,” and these factors can be explored in future studies, the investigators said.
The study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health. The researchers had no relevant financial conflicts to disclose.