The brand product had annual sales of $200 million in the US in the twelve months through June 2007, based on IMS sales data.

Novartis filed a patent infringement suit against Teva in April 2005 over Famciclovir products. The US District Court for the District of New Jersey hearing is due to hear Novartis’ motion for a preliminary injunction in this case on September 5, 2007. Both parties have agreed not to launch a generic Famciclovir product until the conclusion of the hearing.

The drugs were unlicensed, generic versions of Pfizer’s Viagra (sildenafil citrate) and Eli Lilly’s Cialis (tadalafil), going by the names Kamagra (in tablet and sachet form), Lovegra and Apcalis.

The confiscated goods were worth around £350,000 (€519,000), and most likely manufactured in the Far East before being imported into the UK, according to an MHRA spokesperson.

Viagra and Cialis were two of the most widely faked drugs in Europe over 2006, with a rich black market trade in imitation and purportedly genuine tablets gnawing away at authentic drug sales and posing a significant risk to the health of those who purchase them.

“It is essential the medicines are licensed correctly,” said MHRA head of criminal operations Danny Lee-Frost.

“The type of medicines we seized cannot be guaranteed to be acceptably safe because they have not gone through the correct licensing regulatory process. At best these medicines could be a waste of money, at worst they could be severely detrimental to your health.”

Although the MHRA was unable to comment on how the seized meds were likely to reach the market, a spokesperson from the agency did agree that the unlicensed medicines are widely available through a host of online pharmacies claiming to offer cheaper, easily accessible alternatives to the authentic branded drugs.

“There are people out there illegally selling these medicines online,” the MHRA spokesperson told in-PharmaTechnologist.com.

“These male impotence drugs, lifestyle drugs, are certainly the kind of things widely peddled online.”

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Many of these internet pharmacies will be located in countries outside the regions regulated by the MHRA, with a similar situation for equivalent authorities representing other countries. As such, the agency warns that the risk of substandard or fake medicines is vastly increased through buying online.

In a bid to try and establish some kind of standard or policing method of these internet pharmacies, in 2006 the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) initiated a pilot logo scheme to help the public identify whether a specific website is linked to a bona fide, registered pharmacy.

Through the scheme, online pharmacies carry a logo which, although not an accreditation by the RPSGB in any way, legitimises the pharmacy’s online activity and links it to a real bricks-and-mortar pharmacy on the street.

The initial pilot involved 20 online pharmacies, and once the scheme is launched fully, it will be compulsory for all pharmacies registered with the RPSGB and trading online to carry the logo.

The project is still in development, and although original plans were for the scheme to launch next month, technical delays have meant that it is more likely that the fully-fledged logo programme will kick off in the new year.

Last week’s West London seizure was the latest success in the MHRA Enforcement Team’s continuous clamp-down on the sale and distribution of unlicensed and illegal drug products. Although no arrests have been made as yet, any individual convicted of offences under the UK Medicines Act can be sentenced to a maximum of two years imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine.

If found to have financially benefited from the proceeds of the crime, the MHRA can also cite the Proceeds of Crime Act in order to recoup illicit earnings from guilty parties.

Tests on lab animals have shown that the microbicide gel, called Viva Gel, inactivates the HIV virus and another responsible for genital herpes.

Lead researcher Dr Jeremy Paull, from the Melbourne-based pharmaceutical company Starpharma, told the International AIDS Society conference in Sydney that the gel would be used by heterosexual men who apply it directly to themselves before sex.

It would be most useful in sub-Saharan African nations where the HIV epidemic is mostly seen among heterosexuals.

The active ingredient in the microbicide is dendrimer, a molecule which binds itself to the viruses and prevents them from infecting healthy cells, Dr Paull said.

Recent trials on animals have shown it is between 85 and 100 per cent effective at blocking both viruses.

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Safety trials of the gel are now underway in humans and the first results, presented at the congress, show it is safe and well tolerated in healthy men, uncircumcised or not.

Dr Paull said the gel’s ability to prevent genital herpes was particularly positive.

“The prevention of herpes indication, given the level of the epidemic in the developed world, perhaps gives us a different angle,” he said.

The gel was described as “unique” by Roberta Black from the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who chaired the conference session.

“I believe it may be unique in terms of development for two different indications, both genital herpes and HIV,” Dr Black said.

The gel is currently being trialled on women as a contraceptive

It was not until a few weeks after he ditched her for his ex-girlfriend that she decided to ask her doctor about it, just to be sure. Her doctor confirmed Pollock’s worst fears: Despite what her boyfriend had told her, she said he had given her herpes.

Last week, Pollock, 49, of Long Beach, filed a lawsuit against her ex in Nassau Supreme Court, charging that the disease he gave her will make it difficult ever to be intimate with a man again.

“He took away the most precious thing I had - the ability to love and be loved,” she said.

Pollock’s ex-boyfriend could not be reached for comment.

People have sued their sexual partners for giving them sexually transmitted diseases before, said Pollock’s lawyer, Scott Cohen of Carle Place. Such lawsuits are more common with HIV and AIDS, but several suits have been filed in the past few years over non-fatal diseases like herpes, he said.

When Pollock, who is divorced and has two grown children, met her boyfriend in September 2006, she said she thought her dream of finding a life partner had come true.

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About two months into the relationship, she said he told her he’d had genital herpes - an incurable virus marked by periodic outbreaks of sores on the genitals - for the past 12 years. But she said he told her not to worry: The disease could only be spread during an outbreak, and he had not had one of those in six years.

Pollock said she didn’t panic then. She loved this man and respected him, and felt confident that he knew the details of his own condition. The two continued to have unprotected sex, she said.

It was not until March, shortly after the man ended their relationship, that Pollock decided to ask her doctor, she said.

“I was outraged,” she said, weeping. “Because some selfish guy didn’t give me the facts, I have to have this for the rest of my life. … My broken heart will mend. This will stay forever.”

Genital herpes affects as many as one in five people, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics. Still, she said she feels that it has ended her dating life, at least for now. The one man she has dated since then got up and walked out of a restaurant when she told him she had the disease, she said.

Pollock, who does not have health insurance, said the unspecified damages that she’s suing for is only part of the reason she has filed the lawsuit. Mostly, she said she wants to warn others that this could happen to them.

“Human kindness would have indicated that he should have stepped up to the plate, told her the facts and said, ‘Do you want to continue the relationship?’” Cohen said. “He breached that duty.”

The incident is an isolated case, but horse owners should take the proper precautions to protect their horses against infection.

“There isn’t an outbreak of equine herpes in Aiken County,” said Dr. Jamie Carter of Southern Equine Services, who is treating the horse.

“The horse is being treated and recovering very nicely. It was a voluntary quarantine at the farm, and no other horses on the farm have shown any symptoms.”

Equine herpes is a common virus that occurs globally, according to the Complete Equine Veterinary Manual. There are eight subtypes of the equine herpes virus affecting horses and donkeys, and EHV-1 is the most common. EHV-1 can cause respiratory, reproductive (abortion in pregnant mares) and neurological disease.

The virus is usually spread by the respiratory tract through direct contact with nasal secretions from one horse to another or through the air.

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EHV-1 can be carried from one horse to another on shared water buckets, tack, or by a person’s hands or clothes, wrote Dr. Nicola Pusterla, a professor in the department of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California-Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, in Equus magazine.

EHV-1 is a common infectious agent and is responsible for a mild respiratory disorder that can affect the central nervous system and, in some cases, can be fatal.

The virus has an incubation period of two to seven days.

A horse infected with the neurological form may experience a high temperature, nasal discharge, gait abnormalities, rear limb ataxia (uncoordination), have difficulty defecating or urinating or have trouble rising or standing, Pusterla wrote.

In the event a horse is diagnosed with the neurological form, the horse should be isolated for three weeks, and proper hygiene measures should be maintained.

There are vaccinations available for EHV-1, but there are no vaccines available to protect against the neurological form of the disease.

Decisions to vaccinate should be made by horse owners in consultation with their veterinarians.

As a pharmaceutical marketing tool, it may set a new standard for candor — and controversy.

The “Say Yes to Knowing” campaign partners Glaxo with the National Medical Association, the country’s main society of black physicians, and the American Social Health Association (ASHA), a nearly century-old organization devoted to fighting what used to be called “venereal disease.” Each has received money from Glaxo in the past, although no donations were made in connection with this effort.

The campaign was introduced last month in Detroit, where it had the support of the local health department. In Baltimore the health commissioner has declined to endorse it.

Glaxo makes one of three drugs for genital herpes, which is caused by herpes simplex virus types 1 or 2. The infection cannot be cured, but it can be suppressed with daily medication.

Some experts worry that the campaign may lead to widespread testing and large-scale treatment of people who do not have symptoms — a strategy not recommended by federal health authorities. Even Glaxo’s supporters think the effort is likely to be controversial.

“My sense is that this is probably a high-risk campaign for GSK,” said Edward Hook, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and chairman of the board of ASHA. He believes that the campaign “will raise awareness across the country.” He added, “I don’t think even many doctors know how common genital herpes is.”

A federal survey in the early 1990s found that 21 percent of American adults had the infection. Among blacks, the rate was 48 percent. A follow-up survey this decade found that the national prevalence had fallen to 17 percent, but in blacks it had not gone down significantly.

In about 40 percent of newly infected people, the virus causes painful, pimple-like sores on the genitals. Although they eventually go away even without treatment, they can reappear every few months. In most people, recurrences are less frequent as time passes. In the survey, only one in 10 people who tested positive knew they were infected. A person without symptoms can transmit the virus to a sexual partner.

Genital herpes poses two chief hazards, apart from pain and embarrassment. Active infection in late pregnancy can cause devastating illness in a newborn. Infection also triples the risk of acquiring the AIDS virus from an HIV-infected person.

Medical authorities advise testing anyone with herpes-like sores and treating those who have active or painful infections. Many experts also support long-term treatment of an infected person whose regular partner is uninfected. A study several years ago showed that a daily dose of Glaxo’s drug valacyclovir (sold as Valtrex) cut the odds of transmitting the virus in half — from 4 percent to 2 percent — over a period of eight months.

Few experts, however, recommend testing all adults for herpes. Both the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which advises the Department of Health and Human Services, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reject routine screening.

There are several reasons.

Telling people they have an incurable, sexually transmitted disease can have serious social and emotional consequences. And there is no evidence that long-term treatment of tens of millions of asymptomatic people is worth the time, effort and anguish.

And treatment can be expensive. While generic acyclovir, the oldest anti-herpes drug, costs as little as $9.96 for a month’s supply, Glaxo’s Valtrex costs $192.88.

Whether testing and treatment of a subpopulation, such as black adults, are useful and cost-effective has not been studied. A mathematical model published in March concluded that “suppressive coverage” would reduce the overall prevalence of genital herpes, especially if drugs were started right after people acquire the virus.

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Baltimore’s health commissioner, Joshua M. Sharfstein, said his department turned down Glaxo’s request to become a local partner in its campaign “because of the lack of evidence to support, as a public health strategy, screening for herpes in people without symptoms.” He added that “the racial targeting was not an issue that we needed to address to make a decision.”

For their part, Glaxo officials describe the campaign as largely an educational experiment. The company is surveying about 100 people in each city before and after the campaign to see if they learned anything about genital herpes.

“The first step is to see if we are able to move the needle and increase awareness,” said Marc Meachem, a company official. The survey is not a formal epidemiological study, and there are no plans to publish the results.

Glaxo Senior Vice President Lynn Marks said, “We haven’t said that we should screen any populations.”

Nevertheless, on 100,000 brochures and a Web site, Herpes411.com, from the company, a message says, “A simple blood test is the best way to know if you have the virus.” It goes on to say that people who think they may have been exposed “should ask your healthcare provider about being tested.”

The campaign material does not mention Glaxo’s drug, but a Web page devoted to it can be reached through the herpes site with two clicks.

Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, said more research is needed to determine whether widespread testing and chronic treatment for herpes are worthwhile.

“While it is nice to educate people with a campaign like this, at the end of the day it tells us more about what we don’t know than about what we do know,” he said.

But Anita Moncrease is convinced. A physician and consultant who works part time for the Detroit health department, Moncrease urged Glaxo to engage other city health departments and is negotiating with the company for help in paying for blood tests for uninsured people in Detroit’s public clinics.

She admits there is a risk of stigma and stereotype with a message aimed at one racial group. “I am concerned about the negative connotations because this is a sexually transmitted disease,” she said. “But I am concerned about the public health of the citizens of the city of Detroit more.”

Glaxo has previously targeted blacks for messages about diseases especially prevalent among them. It promoted the diabetes drug Avandia by direct mail, hired basketball star Magic Johnson for advertisements about AIDS treatment and engaged football player Jerome Bettis for an “asthma awareness” project.

“We need to reach out increasingly to these populations, not decreasingly,” Marks said.

K.B.

Dear K.B.: 1. Sexual transmission is the most common way to acquire herpes infection. Around 50 million Americans are infected with it, and another one-half to 1 million get it yearly. The genital infection is usually caused by the herpes-2 virus. The herpes-1 virus causes cold sores. The herpes-1 virus can cause a genital infection through oral sex. And, in rare instances, a person could transfer the herpes-1 virus from his or her cold sore to the genital area by touching the cold sore and then touching the genitals.

2. and 3. The most reliable test for herpes infection is a viral culture. That entails swabbing the rash with an applicator and sending the applicator to a lab for viral growth. The best results are obtained when the rash is fresh — in the first few days of infection. There are, however, other herpes tests — a blood test and a test for the virus’s nucleic acid.

4. A doctor can pretty well recognize a herpes rash, but a visual inspection is not absolute proof of infection.

5. The rash is a patch or patches of painful, tiny blisters whose roofs eventually break to form a sore that heals on its own.

6. After the first breakout, a person can have one to five subsequent breakouts a year. Some have none; a few have more.

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The herpes booklet describes this infection, as well as genital wart infections. Readers can obtain a copy by writing to: Dr. Donohue — No. 1202, Box 536475, Orlando, FL 32853-6475. Enclose a check or money order (no cash) for $4.75 U.S./$6.75 Can. with the recipient’s printed name and address. Please allow four weeks for delivery.

Dear Dr. Donohue: Ferritin: What is it, what is its normal range, and how important is it in the body? My reading was 5.

J.W.

Dear J.W.: Ferritin is a protein that serves as a storage bin for iron. Normal values differ in different labs, but commonly employed ones are 12 to 300 ng/ml for men and 10 to 150 for women.

Causes for a low ferritin include blood loss, iron deficiency and pregnancy.

Have you had other lab tests, like a blood count? Anemia follows on the heels of a low ferritin count.

NYPD BLUE ACTOR SUED BY EX

Actor Esai Morales is being sued by a former live-in girlfriend who alleges the former NYPD Blue star assaulted her and gave her herpes. Elizabeth Massochi claims in the suit that Morales knew he had herpes and never told her, leaving her with “an incurable disease that will have associated medical expenses, pain and discomfort for the rest of her life.”

BRAEDEN GETS HOLLYWOOD STAR

Eric Braeden, who has played ruthless tycoon Victor Newman on The Young and the Restless for more than 25 years, received a star yesterday on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Braeden, 66, joined the cast of the CBS soap in 1980 and won an Emmy for his role in 1998.

LOHAN, FINALLY, SURRENDERS TO POLICE

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Lindsay Lohan turned herself in to face charges of driving under the influence in connection with the Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash that sent her into rehab. Accompanied by her attorney, the 21-year-old actor surrendered at the Beverly Hills police department Thursday afternoon to be fingerprinted and photographed, police said.

TRAVOLTA SUING OWNERS OF AIRPORT

Actor John Travolta is suing the owners of the airport outside his home in an aviation community, claiming they lied to keep his Boeing 707 out. Travolta claims Greystone Airport owners changed the airport’s records in 2006 to indicate that it could not support large airplanes.

50 CENT SUES OVER VIOLENT GAME

Rapper 50 Cent sued an Internet advertising company for US$1 million yesterday, claiming it illegally used his image in a game where the player pretends to shoot him. The game, called Shoot the Rapper, shows 50 Cent walking back and forth in an ad across the top of a web page while the viewer is encouraged to shoot him by aiming and clicking with the mouse, court papers say.

SWEETIN FILLING UP HER OWN HOUSE

Jodie Sweetin, who starred on TV’s Full House for eight seasons, is a new bride, a celebrity website reported yesterday. Sweetin, 25, exchanged vows with Cody Herpin, 30, last Saturday at a Las Vegas Strip wedding chapel, CelebTV.com said

This is according to a three-year study conducted by Family Health International (FHI) in Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Thailand.

The study, commissioned by National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NICHD) in the US, was the largest and most comprehensive inquiry into the link between contraceptives and HIV to date, involving thousands of women in the three countries.

It compared the women’s patterns of contraceptive use to their risk of infection with HIV to establish if there was any relationship between the two. None was found.

Working in conjunction with seven other collaborating institutions, FHI studied the use of the most commonly prescribed forms of hormonal contraception, namely combined oral contraceptives containing estrogen and progestin, and depot-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA), a three-monthly injectable contraceptive containing progestin only.

“There was no statistically significant difference in the risk of HIV acquisition between users of combined oral contraceptives or DMPA and those not using hormonal contraception,” concluded FHI’s Charles Morrison, who led the study.

One study in Kenya had previously established that DMPA, popularly known as Depo Provera, increased the risk of contracting HIV among high-risk women. The Kenyan study, however, did not investigate the implications of contraceptives in low-risk women, who form the bulk of the population.

In all, 6,109 women participated in the FHI study— 2,235 in Uganda; 2,296 in Zimbabwe and 1,578 in Thailand. The women were tested for HIV four to five times a year, for 15 to 24 months to track their status. Among the researchers involved in the study were HIV/Aids experts from Makerere University.

According to the researchers involved in the study, the findings are important to help clarify the matter among many women, given the “feminisation” of the HIV/Aids epidemic and the fact that more than 100 million women around the world use hormonal contraception. More than 20 million women are currently infected with HIV, mostly as a result of heterosexual relations.

“Understanding whether hormonal contraceptive use alters the risk of HIV acquisition among women is a critical public health issue,” the study authors wrote in an issue of the journal Aids published earlier this year.

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NUMEROUS OTHER STUDies had tried to establish whether contraceptives might increase a woman’s risk of becoming infected with HIV, but their results were largely inconclusive due to several factors, including sample selection and sizes, as well as their duration.

The FHI/NICHD study was designed to overcome many of the limitations that made these studies inexhaustive. For example, the study was conducted primarily among women seeking family planning services, who more closely resemble the vast majority of women using hormonal contraception worldwide, as opposed to high-risk women such as sex workers who are not representative.

ALL THE 6,109 WOMEN INvolved in the study were offered their choice of either oral contraceptives or DMPA, as well as condoms. The women were also intensively counselled on how to use these methods and how to reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV. The researchers also examined the women for sexually transmitted infections, and offered them treatment, if they needed it.

At the end of the study, 213 Ugandan and Zimbabwean women had become infected with HIV, as well as just three Thai women. The large difference was attributed to socio-economic reasons, national prevalence rates, as well as Thailand’s superior anti-HIV strategy, including the distribution of free condoms in brothels, which had pre-empted a full-blown Aids epidemic there.

Despite the high rate of infections in Uganda and Zimbabwe, the researchers were categorical that they did not find any significant relationship between contraceptive use and vulnerability to HIV.

“In summary, this large, multi-site study found no overall increased risk of HIV acquisition associated with hormonal contraceptive use,” the study authors wrote in Aids. “This provides reassurance for women in moderate and high HIV prevalence settings who need effective contraception that any increased overall risk associated with hormonal contraception is, at most, modest.”

According to the researchers, the study however confirmed that other risk factors played a role in the transmission of infection. The risk of contracting HIV during the study was, for example, two times greater for women with genital herpes infection than it was for women without herpes infection, regardless of whether the women used hormonal contraception or not.

Previous studies have found genital herpes, as well as other sexually transmitted diseases, to be major risk factors for acquiring HIV. About half of all women enrolled in the FHI study had genital herpes, thus raising their vulnerability to HIV.

Apart from FHI and Makerere University, the other institutions involved in the study were the University of Zimbabwe; the US universities of California, Case Western Reserve, and Johns Hopkins; and the Chiang Mai University, of Thailand. Family Health International is a non-profit international organisation dealing with reproductive health issues.

The cost, $150, gave her only slight pause. If the device worked, it would save her the time and money she spent on acne treatments and dermatologist visits for herself and her daughter. “I have very dry skin, so I have to be careful about using acne remedies with benzoyl peroxide,” says the 53-year-old Memphis, Tenn., woman. “This sounded so positive.”

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With the evolution of laser technology, do-it-yourself personal care has entered a new realm. Consumers can now calm acne flare-ups, plump facial wrinkles and restore thinning hair with a variety of hand-held devices. Others in development could treat superficial wounds, relieve pain and remove body hair.

“This field will grow because we have discovered how to channel the power of light and cause reactions in the skin and hair,” says John Carullo, director of marketing for Sunetics, manufacturer of a hair-regrowth device. “It’s quite an exciting industry, and it’s on the verge of exploding.”

Home hair and skin appliances using lasers or, in some cases, heat can spare consumers from tiresome trips to the doctor’s office and may be less costly, over time, than monthly in-office facials and hair treatments. But they won’t work the same kind of magic that can be conjured up with higher-powered tools. And some may even be a waste of money.

“It’s a matter of degree,” says Dr. Harold Brody, a clinical professor of dermatology at Emory University in Atlanta. “If people are trying to treat mild conditions, it may help. But if it’s something severe, they will need the help of a dermatologist.”

The popularity of in-home treatments mirrors the use of medical devices by physicians, says Dr. Wendy E. Roberts, a Rancho Mirage, Calif., dermatologist and assistant professor of medicine at Loma Linda University Medical Center. “I think eventually these could be effective for home use,” she says. “But right now, there are questions about the efficacy of some of these systems. There’s a lot of hype.”

Consumers may have especially high expectations for home lasers. Lasers release a special form of light in a single wavelength; by contrast, normal daylight consists of varying wavelengths. Hot lasers, the kind used by health professionals in the treatment of skin resurfacing and tattoo removal, are high-energy devices that cause heat damage to the skin, triggering a healing response.

Cool lasers are sometimes called low-level lasers or low-level light therapy. This type of laser doesn’t damage tissue and is safe to use at home. They work by passing a beam of light through the skin to reach cells below the skin’s surface and stimulate the body’s natural healing processes. Energy produced by cool lasers appears to prompt the production of collagen and ATP (the energy source needed for cellular functions), promote blood circulation and boost the release of growth factors and the removal of waste products from cells.

“I sincerely doubt any of these things are so aggressive that they would produce side effects,” says Brody, “but the effectiveness is going to be mild, too.”

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Consumers may think that Food and Drug Administration clearance means the devices work similarly to those used by doctors. But FDA clearance of this type means only that the manufacturer has submitted some data showing effectiveness for the device’s intended purpose.

For example, devices to stimulate hair regrowth for balding men have been sold over the counter for years, although manufacturers couldn’t claim the devices helped regrow hair. The approval in February for the HairMax LaserComb was a milestone because the manufacturer produced scientific data to show the product had some effect in growing hair.

But not every light-based hair and skin device has received FDA clearance.

“Consumers need to ask enough questions to make sure what they are getting is truly efficacious,” says Dr. Mark Solomon, a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia and spokesman for the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. “Over-the-counter devices don’t hurt anybody, so you can sell them. But that doesn’t mean they work.”

The American Cancer Society has warned that low-level light therapy products in particular are being touted for conditions for which there is little or no proof that they help, such as pain relief, inflammation, smoking cessation, herpes, high blood pressure and migraines.

But the devices are becoming more visible in the marketplace. Sunetics is marketing its laser hair brush for $399. Next month the firm will also begin selling the device with a removable head that can be replaced with one of four attachments (each costing $250) for use on acne, facial wrinkles, skin pigmentation and pain relief/wound healing.

Although there is some research supporting the effects of low-level laser therapy for hair regrowth and acne, there is little or no data to support other uses, Roberts says.

Consumers should seek a doctor’s advice for persistent skin or hair problems, Brody says. A home device could lighten a skin lesion that is actually a melanoma skin cancer or remove scaling skin, the symptom of another type of skin cancer.

“Safety is paramount,” he says. “You don’t want to delay a diagnosis.”

Laura Beard says she uses an acne laser device called ThermaClear about once a week to speed up the removal of a blemish or two. However, her teenage daughter Kelli has chronic acne and will see a dermatologist on a regular basis