Oral aqueous green tea extract and acne vulgaris: A placebo-controlled study

Abstract

Green tea is an ancient beverage and a famous herbal medicine. Recently, it has been used successfully as a topical preparation in acne patients. The objective of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of oral green tea extract in a group of patients with mild-to-moderate acne vulgaris. In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial, 34 volunteers with mild-to moderate acne vulgaris were randomly categorized in two, age and sex-matched groups, receiving either three capsules containing 500 mg aqueous extract of green tea in each (cases, n = 18), or placebo (controls, n = 16) three times daily for 30 consecutive days. Facial acne noninflamed, inflamed and total (noninflamed plus inflamed) lesion counts were documented at baseline, on week 2 and at endpoint (day 30) by an observer who was blind to the grouping of patients. In case group, there were 9 males (50%) and 9 females (50%) with a mean age of 14.3±1.8 years (range: 12-17). In control group, there were 11 males (68.8%) and 5 females (31.3%) with a mean age of 13.4±1.3 years (range: 12-16). The two groups were comparable for sex (p = 0.27) and gender (p = 0.11). The mean number of inflamed and total acne lesions decreased significantly more in the case group in comparison with that in the control group (p = 0.001 and 0.01, respectively). Similar difference was not found for noninflamed lesions (p = 0.33). This study showed that oral aqueous extract of green tea is effective against acne lesions in patients with mild-to-moderate disease. © 2014 Asian Network for Scientific Information.