EFFICACY OF DOXYCYCLINE AND TETRACYCLINE IN OCULAR ROSACEA

We compared the effects of doxycycline and tetracycline hydrochloride on the subjective symptoms in ocular rosacea. Twenty-four patients wit h symptomatic ocular rosacea were randomly assigned to two groups and treated with doxycycline 100 mg/day (group 1, 16 patients) or tetracyc line hydrochloride 1 g/day (group 2, eight patients). The dosages of e ach drug were gradually tapered and discontinued according to symptoma tic response. At each examination all the manifesting symptoms were sc ored by the patients. Patients were followed up from six weeks to thre e years. After six weeks of drug treatment, all patients except one ha d symptomatic improvement. Although most of the scores of the symptoms were significantly decreased in both groups, greater symptomatic reli ef occurred in the tetracycline hydrochloride-treated patients (P = .0 41). However, after three months of treatment there was no significant difference in symptoms between the two groups. Gastrointestinal tract complications occurred in two of the 16 patients (12.5%) in group 1 a nd in three of the eight patients (37.5%) in group 2. Both tetracyclin e hydrochloride and doxycycline can control the symptoms of ocular ros acea.