DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2018.v06i03.094

Pages: 1284-1289

Molluscum contagiosum is a common, benign, viral cutaneous infection. Many treatment options are available including medical and surgical. Though studies have been done to study the effect of topical Imiquimod and Tretinoin in Molluscum contagiosum, not many comparative studies are available between these two drugs. The present study was conducted to compare the efficacy and safety of topical Imiquimod 5% cream and Tretinoin 0.05% cream in Molluscum contagiosum. Total 60 patients were enrolled for the study after taking consent. The 60 patients were divided in to two equal groups of 30 patients. Both the drugs were given to respective group of 30 patients each for home application. Imiquimod was applied every alternate night thrice weekly and Tretinoin was applied every night for eight weeks on the lesions. Both the drugs were kept for 8 hours in night and followed by wash in the morning. Improvement was calculated as grades on the basis of decrease in number of lesions every two weeks for eight weeks up to which the drugs were applied. 43.3% patients of Imiquimod and 30% patients of Tretinoin group had grade 4 (more than 75% of the lesions cleared from the baseline count) improvement. Wilcoxon signed ranks was used for statistical analysis for the efficacy of each drug that resulted in significant p-value which showed that both the drugs are effective and p-value was not significant in both the groups with regard to safety hence both the drugs are safe for the duration used in the study. Comparative evaluation of both the drugs done by Pearson’s Chi-square test resulted in p-value (0.079) which was not significant that concludes that both the drugs are equally safe and equally effective in Molluscum contagiosum.