Abstract

Background: Seborrheic dermatitis (SD) is a chronic, relapsing inflammatory disease, mainly affecting the scalp and face. The pathogenesis of SD has been not fully understood yet, but may be related to the skin colonization of Malassezia species, lipophilic yeasts. Phototherapy with light emitting diode (LED) device has been become a new therapeutic modality for some skin diseases such as acne.

Objective: To evaluate effectiveness and safety of phototherapy with home-use LED in the treatment of patients with SD of the scalp.

Methods: Eight patients with mild-to-moderate SD of the scalp participated. The patients used a home-use LED device combined 395 nm blue light with 660 nm red light for 6~7 min twice daily for 8 weeks. Patients' assessments were made by clinical findings including erythema (0~15), scales (0~15), itching (0~10), and lesional extent (0~15). And clinical photographs were taken at 0, 2, 4 and 8 weeks, respectively.

Results: At 8 weeks after LED treatment, erythema (7.75 to 5.13, p=0.018), scales (7.38 to 4.13, p=0.017), itching (6 to 3, p=0.011) and lesional extent (8.25 to 5.25, p=0.017) were significantly decreased, respectively. Satisfactory scores were also relatively high (mean 8.13 of 10). No severe adverse reaction was reported, excepting hair dryness (n=1) and brief stinging sense (n=1).

Conclusion: Home-use LED was effective and safe in the treatment of SD of the scalp. These results suggest the LED device might be an adjuvant therapeutic tool in the treatment of Malassezia species associated diseases such as dandruff and SD. Further long-term and large-scale studies are required to assess the efficacy and safety of home-use LED.

Keywords

Seborrheic dermatitis Dandruff Light emitting diode (LED) Clinical trial

KJMM 2014 June;19(2):31-38(8). Epub 2016 February 17
Copyright © 2014 by Korean Journal of Medical Mycology

Language

Korean/English

Author

Seung Myun Kim; Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea
Seung-Chul Lee; Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea
Young Ho Won; Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea
Jee-Bum Lee; Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea

Corresponding

Jee-Bum Lee, Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, 501-757, Korea. Tel: +82-62-220-6694, Fax: +82-62-222-4058, e-mail: jbmlee@chonnam.ac.kr

Publication history

Received 23 December 2013; Revised 24 December 2013; Accepted 14 June 2014.

Acknowledgements

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Seung Myun Kim

Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea

Seung-Chul Lee

Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea

Young Ho Won

Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea

Jee-Bum Lee

Department of Dermatology, Chonnam National University Medical School, Gwangju, Korea

Since epub date 2016 February 17