NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The prescription cream Elidel used to treat eczema leads to rapid improvement in symptoms and quality of life in people who suffer from a specific type of acne-like condition that typically occurs around the mouth, doctors from Germany report based on a study they conducted.

So-called "perioral dermatitis" or POD mostly affects young and middle-aged women and there currently is no generally accepted standard treatment, the study team notes in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology.

Overhydration of the skin caused by frequent use of moisturizers and abuse of topical steroids are two triggering factors. Treatment usually consists of stopping any cosmetic products and topical steroids. "The current options to treat POD are quite limited and not very effective," Dr. Thomas Schwarz of the University of Kiel and colleagues note.

In their study, they had 124 patients with POD apply Elidel cream or a control cream twice daily for up to four weeks.

On a POD severity scale ranging from 0 to 9, both groups had POD severity scores of 5.2 at the outset. The average POD severity score fell to 2.6 in the Elidel cream arm versus 3.5 in the control arm – a significant difference favoring the active cream.

Far more Elidel-treated patients than control patients responded to treatment with a greater than 50 percent reduction in POD severity. Elidel cream worked best in patients with steroid-induced POD.

Elidel-treated patients reported greater gains in quality of life than control-treated patients.

Stopping Elidel cream did not lead to a rebound of skin symptoms in most of the patients re-examined at four and eight weeks after the treatment phase of the study, they also report.

"A recent critical appraisal of the reports on the treatment of POD has clearly indicated that treatment of POD still remains a challenge," Schwarz and colleagues point out in their report.

The current study, they conclude, suggests that Elidel cream "may represent an attractive treatment option for POD," especially in patients with a history of topical steroid use.

The study was sponsored by Novartis, which markets Elidel cream.