Lactoferrin for Acne
Verdict: Published with Warning
Across 4 PubMed studies, the evidence for Lactoferrin in Acne grades Tier B — preliminary evidence. Effective, but with safety or population caveats.
B 🟡 B Preliminary Evidence Published with Warning
Why this grade7-layer evidence engine
⚖️
Scoring transparency
All scores computed by a 7-layer evidence engine — fully auditableRaw score 0.58
D
C
B
A
S
← counter-evidence / ineffectiveeffective / strong evidence →
Final grade
B · Published with Warning
Confidence
76%
Broadly consistent
Evidence level
E3
Single high-quality meta-analysis
▸View the full decision path (audit trail)
- compute_raw_score — 加權公式: L2×0.30 + L3×0.25 + L5×0.25 + L11×0.10 + L1×0.10 = 0.58
- tier_from_score — 依分數區間映射至 tier letter
- apply_hec_rules — 高品質 SR/MA 顯示 positive (1 篇 > 0 negative)
- tier_strict_requirement_check — Tier 條件達標，未降階
- detect_disputes — 偵測到 0 個 hard + 0 個 soft dispute
- decide_status — 依 tier + dispute 結果決定 status
PubMed studies (4)L2 · primary research & systematic reviews
A systematic review of lactoferrin use in dermatology
Finding: Narrative review of 6 clinical studies concluded there is 'encouraging' evidence that lactoferrin may benefit acne, psoriasis and diabetic ulcerations but explicitly stated further research is necessary before it can be a complementary therapy; no meta-analytic pooling or effect size was performed.
View on PubMed A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to determine the efficacy and safety of lactoferrin with vitamin E and zinc as an oral therapy for mild to moderate acne vulgaris
Finding: Combination lactoferrin+vitamin E+zinc cut total lesions vs placebo by 28.5% at week 10 (p<0.0001), with inflammatory lesions down 44% and comedones down 32.5% (both p<0.0001) and no adverse events, BUT the benefit cannot be attributed to lactoferrin alone (3-ingredient combination) and the trial was run by the manufacturer's own R&D division.
View on PubMed Dietary effect of lactoferrin-enriched fermented milk on skin surface lipid and clinical improvement of acne vulgaris
Finding: At 12 weeks the 200 mg/day lactoferrin fermented-milk group showed reductions vs placebo in inflammatory lesions (38.6%), total lesions (23.1%), acne grade (20.3%) and sebum (31.1%) with a selective fall in skin-surface triacylglycerols, but the small trial (n=36) labels these 'significant' without reporting any p-values or CIs and leans heavily on the surrogate lipid endpoint.
View on PubMed Efficacy and tolerability of oral lactoferrin supplementation in mild to moderate acne vulgaris: an exploratory study
Finding: In this UNCONTROLLED open-label study (39 completers) total lesions fell 22.5% (p<0.001) and non-inflammatory lesions 23.5% (p<0.001) from baseline, but inflammatory lesions changed only 20.2% and non-significantly (p=0.054); with no control arm these within-subject changes cannot be separated from natural fluctuation/regression to the mean.
View on PubMed