Pills for Acne Treatment: Antibiotics, Retinoids, & Vitamins

Do Antibiotic Acne Treatment Pills Help Breakouts?

Antibiotics aid in the treatment of pimples by decreasing bacteria and inflammation in the skin. The antibiotics that are prescribed are Tetracyclines which are broad-spectrum antibiotics that fight numerous types of bacteria. These drugs are also similar to Isotretinoin (Accutane) which is popularly prescribed by dermatologists for severe pimples.

Antibiotics are prescribed by a dermatologist for the treatment of severe acne. Severe breakouts include cysts, nodules, pimples that are highly inflamed, and comedones which are blackheads and whiteheads.​

History of Tetracyclines

Tetracyclines were discovered in the late 1940s by an American plant physiologist named Benjamin Minge Duggar from soil bacteria called actinomycetes. In this bacteria was chlortetracycline which became the first tetracycline antibiotic. It was shown in studies in the 1950s that tetracycline had powerful antibacterial properties (1) which led to multiple derivates of the antibiotic.

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