Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Are Prescription Cold Sore Remedies Worth the Added Cost?

By Utley Skinendorf

Prescription-strength cold sore remedies are usually the most-effective oral herpes treatments readily available, and are amongst the only FDA-approved medicines that are available to those people that experience excessive, repeating oral herpes episodes.

While they have some drawbacks (particularly high expenses, and the requirement for a prescribed from your doctor) as compared with their non-prescription, and home remedy rivals, their scientifically-tested record of success makes them well worth the included cost and inconvenience for most herpes sufferers.

Below is a short summary of the leading doctor recommended cold sore remedies:.

Antiviral Creams - Denavir and Zovirax.

Considered being the fastest means to handle a cold sore outbreak, prescribed antiviral creams are applied topically to cold sore fever blisters, and usually cause a practically immediate reduction in discomfort and inflammation.

They are also thought about to be effective agents in the process of recovery, frequently chopping a couple of times off the quantity of time needed for the tissue to mend itself.

The 2 most famous, FDA-approved prescription brands are Denavir (penciclovir 1 %) and Zovirax (acyclovir 5 %). It is arguable with concerns to which brand name is the most reliable (research studies appear to show that this depends, to a terrific extent, upon the particular user), but both antiviral creams have very high success rates in reducing the extent and extent of cold sore breakouts.

An essential distinction worth pointing out is available in the type of the dosing schedules required for the two medicines. Denavir requires topical application to the aspects experiencing the herpes episode every 2 hours over a period of 4 days. Zovirax, on the other hand, is applied 5 times daily (about once every 3 hours) over an identical time frame (4 days).

Zovirax's less-arduous dosing schedule has actually made it ever more popular with consumers considering that it arrived on the scene in 2002, but convenience is apparently its only showed advantage over Denavir. As discussed, the 2 medicines match each other in efficiency, and figuring out which is finest suited to you is most likely best left up to your health professional.

Antiviral Capsules - Famvir and Valtrex.

Whereas antiviral creams are reliable for the therapy of fever blisters after they appear, antiviral pills stand out at stopping episodes prior to the blisters appear.

The two best-known brand names, Famvir (famciclovir) and Valtrex (valacyclovir) have both been verified by FDA testing to be successful at restricting viral shedding of the HSV-1 virus throughout the initial stages of a break out.

In laymen's terms, this suggests that taking them right at the first tip of an episode might well stop the episode from worsening.

The Downside to Prescription Cold Sore Treatments.

For the bulk of consumers, the greatest disadvantage to making use of prescribed cold sore remedies is their cost. Prescription cold sore treatments are more costly, however their degree of customer contentment tends to blow away the competition, too.

Denavir requires topical application to the locations experiencing the herpes episode every 2 hours over a time duration of 4 days. For the majority of customers, the greatest downside to making use of prescription cold sore remedies is their price.

While a non-prescription medicine like Abreva (the sole FDA-approved antiviral cream readily available without prescribed from a physician) offers for as little as $10 USD, a one month supply of a prescription medication is typically three-to-four times that rate.

Prescribed cold sore therapies are more costly, but their degree of consumer contentment tends to blow away the competitors, too.

When it comes to treating cold sores and fever blisters, natural methods are still the most popular and give more dependable results.
 

Labels: , , ,