title: Topical chemotherapy of actinic keratoses of the upper extremity with tretinoin and 5-fluorouracil: a double-blind controlled study.
abstract: In a randomized double-blind controlled study, 19 patients applied 5% 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) cream to actinic keratoses (AK) on each arm twice daily, followed by nightly application of 0.05% tretinoin cream to one arm, and a control cream to the other arm until discomfort precluded further applications. After 3 months, the number of residual AK was compared to pre-treatment values. The tretinoin-treated arms had 15.7 +/- 6.1 AK before treatment and 3.4 +/- 2.6 AK following therapy. The control arms had 15.3 +/- 6.9 AK before therapy and 4.2 +/- 2.5 lesions afterwards. Using a one-tailed paired t-test, the difference in response was statistically significant (0.03 less than P less than 0.04). It was concluded that daily application of 0.05% tretinoin cream appeared to enhance the efficacy of topical 5-FU in destruction of AK of the arms and may represent a useful treatment modality.
mesh_terms: D001132:Arm; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D004311:Double-Blind Method; D004359:Drug Therapy, Combination; D005472:Fluorouracil / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D007642:Keratosis / Q000188:drug therapy*; D011897:Random Allocation; D014212:Tretinoin / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D014212:Tretinoin; D005472:Fluorouracil