comparing the efficiency of elidel cream and elidel accompanied with tretinoin cream in treatment of alopecia areata

Alopecia areata is a disorder causing local or total body hair loss. various therapeutic modalities have been used for the treatment of this disease; however, none of them were completely effective. in this study, we compared the efficacy of topical elidel alone and elidel accompanied with tretinoin in the treatment of alopecia areata. this randomized controlled clinical trial was performed on patients with alopecia areata in rasul-e akram hospital in tehran, iran, from 2010 to 2011. patients in the elidel group applied elidel 1% cream twice a day. the second group received 1% elidel in the mornings and 0.05% tretinoin in the evenings. the results compared after three months of treatment. a total of 80 patients were randomly allocated to two treatment groups. the mean age of the patients was 21.8 ± 3.9 and 21.6 ± 4.4 years in the elidel and elidel plus tretinoin groups, respectively (p = 0.879). there were 26 males (65%) in the elidel and 24 (60%) male patients in elidel plus tretinoin groups (p = 0.481). in the elidel group, the complete cure was observed in eight patients (20%), relative cure in 14 (35%), no change in 10 (25%), and disease aggravation in 8 (20%) cases; in the elidel plus tretinoin group, the complete cure was reported in 18 patients (45%), relative cure in 12 (30%), no change in 8 (20%), and disease aggravation in 2 (5%) (p = 0.048) cases. the cure rate in both groups significantly changed in comparison to the previous findings (p < 0.001). our study showed that the combined use of elidel and tretinoin was more effective than elidel alone.