Q. My face is dry but I am concerned about using a moisturizer. Won't it block my pores and prevent my topical medication from being absorbed?

Q. If I take long-term medication consistently, will it lose its effectiveness?

A. Topical therapy is commonly prescribed to control rosacea on a long-term basis, and no evidence has suggested that it loses effectiveness. A long-term controlled clinical study found that 77 percent of rosacea patients consistently using topical metronidazole remained in remission, while 42 percent of patients using no therapy had relapsed within six months.

Q. I've been using medication for some time now and it has cleared my pimples and reduced my redness, but it also seems to have made me develop more spider veins. What's going on?

Complying with long-term medical therapy may appear to be a demanding commitment. However, many rosacea patients have found that incorporating topical therapy into a twice-daily facial care routine is a painless and efficient way to comply with doctor's orders.¹ In fact, the soothing regimen necessary to avoid irritating the facial skin or causing flushing can be a refuge of calm during a busy day.

Long-term treatment with topical medication alone was found to effectively keep rosacea at bay in a multicenter clinical study reported at the recent annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology.

In the study, after being successfully treated with a combination of oral and topical antibiotics to bring their rosacea under initial control, 88 rosacea sufferers were randomly assigned to use alone either a topical antibiotic or the same topical gel without the antibiotic (placebo) twice daily for six months.

Q. Can rosacea be aggravated by birth control pills?

A. Nothing has been reported in the medical literature indicating that birth control pills may cause rosacea flare-ups. Later in life, however, some women find they develop rosacea during menopause because of the increase in flushing as their bodies undergo hormonal changes.

In a recent National Rosacea Society survey of more than 1,022 rosacea sufferers on compliance with medical therapy, 74 percent said their condition worsened if they failed to take their medication as directed by their physicians.

More than half of the respondents said a flare-up eventually occurred if they did not use medication as prescribed, and 28 percent said their symptoms became more severe. Only 4 percent said their symptoms stayed under control without proper use of medical therapy.

Rosacea sufferers who follow their doctor's orders regarding medical therapy and also make appropriate lifestyle modifications achieve a high rate of success in controlling their condition, according to a recent survey of Rosacea Review readers.

In the survey of 520 rosacea patients, 51 percent were under treatment with topical therapy alone and 34 percent were using a combination of both oral and topical antibiotics. Only 11 percent had been prescribed oral antibiotic tablets alone.

Q. I suffer from regular acne in addition to rosacea. Is this common?