I have been using Epiduo exactly a year from today. I am a 16 year old male. Overall, the medication is great at getting rid of acne. When I started a year ago, (with moderate acne), it took about 2 weeks to fully clear up. This is a drug you have to be patient with until your skin gets the hang of it. With this medication comes a lot of irritating problems.. If I put it ALL over my face, I never have a breakout. But the thing is, my face gets EXTREMELY dry-- Almost to the point to where I can't even move my face and show facial expressions. If I attempt to smile or laugh, my face gets all cracked and looks horrible. My (now previous) dermatologist suggested for me to use spot treatment, but I have done that and it just makes my acne area look bigger and I have breakouts where ever I'm not putting it on. The dryness isn't such a problem around my forehead, but if you put it anywhere around your mouth, nose, or chin, expect the hideous cracking to take place. I just got back home from a new dermatologist (because my last one was continuing to prescribe me Epiduo, although I have stated I wanted something new), but my new dermatologist has prescribed me SOLODYN and Duac topical gel. I'm hoping it has better affects than Epiduo.

PLEASE do not get discouraged if your acne gets WORSE before it gets better. I used epiduo (along with solodyn and recently sodium sulfacetamide lotion) everynight and it took around 7 weeks so fully work. However, if you have severe acne like I did, 7 weeks is worth it for clear skin! My skin has never looked as good as it does now! Ive read other reviews how epiduo cleared some peoples' skin within days...this was NOT my case. I was miserable...my skin became terrible! I stuck it out because I had this feeling it would eventually work and it did! I'm happier than ever! Give it a shot! As I said, I am also taking solodyn and using the sodium sulfacetamide lotion and this is a great combo for me! Good luck!

I've been dealing with hormonal acne for years now (I'm 44) and recently had a major breakout of cystic acne. I have been going to a dermatologist for many years but more for melasma (also hormonal) on my face. My derm gave me a perscription for .04% Retin-A which did NOTHING after months of use. She then gave me samples of .1% Retin-A which did a little more than the .04% but very minimal after 2 months of use. I began to get frustrated and got a second opinion from another derm. He gave me samples of Epiduo and I started treatment that night. At first it dried my skin a bit but I think I was used to the drying due to using Retin -A for so long. I did get some drying around my eyes but moisturizer helped with that. I've been using Epiduo now for 3 weeks and on week 2 started putting a pea sized amount on 2X/day. I haven't had severe drying at all. What I do have is clearer skin because this stuff is making my past scarring disappear! Blackheads are literally falling out (I'm using a mild scrub twice a week) and with makeup no one can even tell I have scars. I work with animals for a living and don't ever wear makeup at work but was having to because of the acne. Now I have gone back to a makeup free face and don't feel like people are looking at my face wondering 'wow! what's up with her skin!' This stuff is crazy good...it does take patience to see results but ohhhh, so worth it. Try it, stick with it, use it religiously (don't give up) and I promise you will have clearer skin AND your confidence back. Since I work outdoors I am a huge advocate of sunscreen even before I started using Epiduo. If you're using this product in the morning BE SURE to use sunscreen on your face. There is a Retinoid in this product and your skin will burn if exposed to sunlight.

Okay so let me just start by saying that i have only been using this product for two weeks and I ADORE IT! I, like most on here, had been dealing with pretty bad acne(papules, whiteheads, blackheads, etc) but not enough that my doctor would put me on any medication. She prescribed me Epiduo gel after I came to her and complained that I didn't want to try Differin due to so many poor reviews on it. I gladly took this prescription and left her office, unaware that it is almost identical to Differin except that it contains benzoyl peroxide. I didn't discover this until after I had used the samples on my face for two days. I was initially worried about this product for many reasons...I had tried 10% benzoyl peroxide(only 2.5% in Epiduo) on my face for years and it did nothing except give me severe dryness and redness. Another worry was that it would just make my skin worse and I would be left with worse acne that I had initially. But I mustered up the courage to start using this gel once a day, every night after washing my face with Clear Pore by Neutrogena. I swear that by day 3 I was crying myself to sleep because of the intense burning and stinging. It felt like I took acid and put it all over my face! My existing zits just fell off my face and left highly pigmented red(almost stains) on my face. There were patches of peeling skin and zits started popping out all over the place. Again, this was all during the first week that I began using Epiduo! Thank God it eventually started to get better. By week 2 my zits were almost completely gone and my blackheads too(never expected that). My face almost has this fresh, clean glow to it that it hasn't had in a loooong time. Coming from a girl with moderate acne, this stuff really works!!! Give it at least 2-3 wks and you WILL see a difference. My skin got used to it and doesn't burn nearly as much anymore after i apply it. I no longer have any existing zits, just a bunch of scars which are quickly fading! t

so when going to the dermatologist she told me it would be a slow moving process, that it will take time to see results. i didn't really believe her, but shes definitely right! it makes you break out like crazy a few weeks into it and skin is a little red. i had a horrible month where i had huge pimples and i was constantly breaking out. that was really discouraging, but the doctor said thats normal. the medicine is designed to get all the dirt thats built up and surface it.... basically you break out until you can't anymore. i started my treatment in february, and by april my pimples were much smaller, less red, and fewer with every breakout. as time went on it got less and less. and now i hardly have a pimple. every now and then i'll have a small one, but definitely worth it in the end! i have a few post acne marks now, but the cream also helps fade the hyper pigmentation. figured i'd share my experience with it because i know how frustrating it can be, but seriously stick with it. the ending result is so worth it :-)

The best and move effective acne product I've ever used, so far has done the best job out of anything I've used to clear up my acne. But you have to STICK TO YOUR REGIMEN. I almost lost hope too quickly and I've only been using it for about a month or so. I realized I have never really given any product any longer than 6 weeks to work when the product itself said that it would take at least 12 to work. I've been using this product for about 2 months now. If you stick to this product, It'll work. My acne began moderately severe. I would say it's down to light.

 BACKGROUND: I am a 27 year old female with fair skin that is very sensitive. I had mild acne during my late teens but it went away after I started taking the birth control pill Yasmin. I took Yasmin for 5 years and I had perfect skin. Then my doctor suggested that I switch to Yaz, which contains the same type of hormones as Yasmin, but lower doses. That's when my adult acne nightmare started ( I was 25). My skin was extremely oily and I had cysts all over my face. They were big and painful, and left horrible hyperpigmentation marks on my face.  I switched to different birth control pills and even went back to taking Yasmin, but my skin did not improve. My doctor prescribed me Retin-A which made my acne worse and left me with more scars. Then I started taking doxycycline but I had to stop because it made me very nauseous. For a while I stopped taking the pill and used over the counter products on my face and my skin improved some.  At that point in time, I would classify my acne as moderate. MY EPIDUO EXPERIENCE: I finally went to a dermatologist and he prescribed me Epiduo, to be applied to the face every night.  During the first week of use, my face was very red, like I had a sunburn, and my skin burned after application. In addition, I experienced extreme dryness, which lead to extreme peeling/flaking of skin. I looked like a lizard and make up only made it worse. I experienced a mild initial breakout that lasted about a week. The dryness and peeling/flaking lasted for about two months, but was manageable with Cetaphil face wash and CeraVe moisturizer with SPF 30. I have been using Epiduo for three months now and my skin is clear! I usually get a couple of small pimples during my period, but they heal very fast and leave no marks. My skin doesn't peel anymore, but sometimes it gets a little dry. I would like to point out that Epiduo did not fade any of my old hyperpigmentation, which is slowly going away with time. MY TWO CENTS: I am so glad I

I am a 30-year-old female with a family history of adult acne (particularly in the 30's). My skin is not dry or oily, it's middle-of-the-road. Here is my acne history: Absolutely nothing through my teenage years. A couple spots here and there in college, but nothing terrible or even very memorable (I just have pictures of the random, very small spot), and I mostly attribute it to bitter cold and humidity in Indiana. Lived in San Diego for three years after college and my skin loved all of the sunshine and perfect humidity level. Then we moved to Colorado. Here's my recent treatment history: My face immediately hated the dryness here, but my worst breakouts were still around my period. When my husband and I got engaged, I went to see a dermatologist so that maybe I wouldn't have to worry about something happening on my wedding day. I am an athlete, and at my first appointment the doctor told me (exact quote) that, "Athletes are just dirty," because I sweat all day and don't wash my face enough. False. I have been an athlete all my life. I should have walked out of his office right then, but I had never been to a dermatologist before and really had no idea what to expect. He prescribed Doryx 100mg (doxycycline) in about January, and then I went down to 50mg approximately May. Everything went great, we got married at the end of September with zero blemishes, and I had planned to stop taking the medicine after the wedding (they're antibiotics, after all). I weaned off of the pills as the doctor had described, and a few months later, my skin freaked out. At first they were fairly minor breakouts, but all the time. Then I developed cystic acne, concentrated either on my chin or forehead (I've always been a T-zone person), and sometimes both. WEEKS of enormous painful bumps that just would NOT come to a head. I tried hot compresses to bring the nastiness to the surface and sometimes that worked, but mostly I just had to go excavating, which was awful and painful and an even more embarrassing healing process afterward. My husband's grandfather had a habit of asking me what had happened (to my chin/forehead) in group settings at family parties. Totally mortifying, especially when I had thought I'd done a decent job of covering up to leave the safety of my house. I went back to the same dermatologist pretty quickly, and he prescribed Doryx again, this time in a 200mg/day dosage. I didn't know to be wary of that, but my first exposure to sun of any kind that year (in Austin in March/April) was very painful and resulted in rashes on my hands and nose because of my increased photosensitivity on the medication. As for treating my acne, it worked to get rid of most of the cystic stuff, but I continued to have regular, sometimes bad breakouts. While they were preferable to what I'd been going through, the sunburns were very painful and seemingly unavoidable. I'm outside all the time. When I called the dermatologist to ask what I could do to prevent the sunburns I was getting, they told me to wear sunscreen. Like I hadn't been wearing the strongest stuff I could find. Fast forward to the next winter...I had continued taking the strong dosage of Doryx because the original doctor hadn't told me to do otherwise, and was not in the habit of having his patients come for check-up appointments. My acne gets worse in the winter because it's even more dry here, and by early March I was just so incredibly done being embarrassed to get within arm's reach of anybody, for fear of them getting a good look at my face. My conversations were short and clipped and I felt disconnected from everyone around me (save my incredibly supportive husband and parents) because I just never wanted to leave my house. I decided to go see a new dermatologist. She was WONDERFUL. So supportive and communicative, and positive about my future. She prescribed minocycline, 80mg (Solodyn is the brand), and Epiduo. I had tried topicals with the old dermatologist but he never told me how to use them, so I had always spot-treated with terrible results. The new, best dermatologist ever told me to spread one pump over my face every night, otherwise the medicine would be too strong. I did exactly as instructed (starting at the end of April), and didn't even notice super dryness or itching at first, because I've always moisturized fairly heavily at night (again, Colorado). After a while though, my skin got a little red and burned when I put moisturizer on: I use Cetaphil cleanser and was using Cetaphil moisturizer at the recommendation of others on this website. When the burning started though, I searched for something creamier and a bit heavier, and found Jason Age Renewal Vitamin E moisturizing cream. I buy it at Walgreens (comes in a little tub), and it has been perfect for me with the Epiduo. My skin did not completely clear up until about the beginning of September (about four months of religious minocycline and Epiduo usage). I experienced terrible purges at about five weeks and eight weeks, as a lot of other people have said. They were awful. Awful, and like no other breakout I'd ever had. Mine were concentrated right around my chin/mouth, and while the breakouts weren't as painful as the cystic acne I used to have, the healing process was very ugly with all of the peeling and impossibility of covering it up. After about ten weeks though, the breakouts I had seemed to be hormonal (around my period), and were much smaller and more manageable than before I started using the medicine. And while healing from the purges was terrible, I truly found that my skin turned over much faster on Epiduo than it ever did before taking it: It still sucked to cover up healing skin, but that process lasted a much shorter time than it used to when I had to do the same thing for cysts or other breakouts. Then, mid-August, I healed from a breakout, and haven't had what I would consider one since. I had regular check-ups with the new, awesome dermatologist throughout the summer, and when I went back at the end of September, she wanted me to wean off of the minocycline and just be on the Epiduo. I was pretty scared, but I did it, had one fairly major pimple (just one) right at the end of the weaning process, and have been perfectly clear since. The scars that formed around my mouth during the purges fade every single day, as do the other scars around my forehead and chin areas. If I use a lighter moisturizer with the Epiduo, I still get a burning sensation, so I continue to use the heavier cream that I mentioned before. Long story short, I am THRILLED with this product. The husband and I went on a tropical vacation at the beginning of December, and not only did I show most of my skin all of the time, but we were in the water constantly (no makeup possible), and I couldn't have felt more confident. I kept thinking how different that vacation would have been if I'd still been on a high doxycycline dosage and not on Epiduo, and it made the week even more enjoyable to know that I've found something that works for me. LOVE it. 100% worth the hard times!!!!! Hope this helps. Honest-but-positive reviews got me through my darkest days during the purges, so I wanted to contribute my own and give my full story. I'm a huge believer!!

My acne problems have always been a recurring one and last year, meaning around Sept 2014 it got worse. I always had acne problems, but they'd clear up within a week with regular acne treatments I bought off from regular pharmacy stores. But around Sept 2014 it just got worse (I still have no clue why....), acne was breaking out all over my face, my forehead, both side of my cheeks, my chin and my neck area. It was a disaster and it honestly affected my self esteem....I felt really horrible and ugly. To make things worse, I was on internship - meaning I had to work, and I work at the zoo where I am constantly being out in the sun, which further worsened my situation. After much hesitation I finally decided to visit a dermatologist, which has been in the field of study for many years. After consultation, she recommended me to use the following products: - Eau thermale Avene Cleanance Soapless Gel Cleanser -Epiduo Gel (advised to use for night before bed) - Clindoxyl once daily gel (advised to use for daytime use) - Oral treatment (doxycycline) **I have oily, acne prone and sensitive skin, please note! This was a 6 month course....meaning i had to go back to the dermatologist for a follow up every 1 and a half month. I was also told to stop using other products and focus specifically on what she recommended. I can start off by saying that within the first few weeks of going through the course, it was very tough. I was still breaking out, in fact, more than before! Red, swelling acne spots all over my entire face and neck, and I could not wear any form of makeup (it won't be able to conceal it anyway). However, I want to also empathise that this is also what my doctor told me to expect. For the first few weeks, putting on the medication would sort of "force" all of the toxins sunk deep into your face out, causing more acne to rise. I also had the bad habit to pick on my acne and strongly advised me against it, because it will leave deep scarring etc. That was also another issue that I had to deal it internally, because the doctor would not be around me 24/7. The first 3 months, I also had to take on oral medication, twice a day. After most the swelling and the acne started to subside, which was approx after 3-1/2 months, I started to see results.....little by little. I was advised to apply the Epiduo on my face, a thin layer of it, every night before bed - so please note: you have to be very religious on it and apply it before you see results! There was few new breakouts (except when it's the time of the month), and the previous scars that I used to pick on started to heal!! The markings reduced slightly, bit by bit, day by day. Of course, one tube isn't enough, I had to pick up new ones each time I return to do a follow up, but it works. Towards the end of the treatment, my dermatologist was really proud of me - I would say 95% of my scarrings were GONE, little breakouts, and it feels like I had a whole new face (not exaggerating). I was also able to put on makeup as well by the end of it. The most difficult part of it was that: - This takes time. The Epiduo is NOT a product that can cure your acne overnight. When i started the treatment I put the product every night, it reduces the swelling when new acne arises (because of oral medication) and when the acne subsides, it STARTS to slowly heal your scarring. I know how it feels when you have new acne, because I was struck by it on my entire face and I was HELPLESS, I was so embarrassed and I work front line, I get huge stares and I have never felt so unconfident in my life. But it takes time for it to heal, I think it's the most difficult part to conquer it. - Cliche but really works. Drink lots of water, stay hydrated and try to eat healthy. For me I drank a close to 2 litres of water a day and try to eat more fruits and vegetables. Try to stay stress free, learn how to manage stress, have more positive thoughts because your feelings affect your hormones which can affect the way your body works and cause acne. Not a result I searched on google --- advised by my doctor and does work :) Stay positive even if you feel really negative about your looks! Would I recommend? Yes, because it works - and I already stopped other brands of acne medication because the Epiduo is worth the money for it and I do SEE the results. However, whatever that works for me might NOT work for you. I'm only sharing my experience but please take this as an opinion and at your own risk. Whatever I've shared here is being advised by my dermatologist and sometimes it might not work, because we all have different skin types and DIFFERENT acne problems. I'm sharing this because you might be considering this but on the fence because of the price. It took me MONTHS to decide on visiting the dermatologist - because it's expensive - but it's worth it. I spent 3 digits on it but I see the results, and I'm proud of how far I've achieved. Visiting a dermatologist can change your life forever! Discuss with your parents before making that decision! Hopefully this helps! Stay positive!

I've used this product for 2 weeks now. I didn't experience redness, stinging or burning on my face, but when I applied a bit to my neck, I accidentaly forgot to moisturize there. The next few days was the area red and scratchy. I could have hoped for a bit faster results by now. I'm still breaking out, even on places I haven't broken out before or places it's quite unusual. But, on the bright side, my nose and the front of my forehead are so SOFT! I love it! And a few of my red marks are fading. I don't know if it's the Epiduo, the Emu Oil (I use Emu Oil as a moisturizer) or something else, but they first started fading after I began using Epiduo. I'm crossing my fingers for this to fully work! It's quite slow, so I guess I should give this product 2 months to work..You have to get rid of the old zits first, in order to see if it works :D