https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4375771/
What do you guys think about this? We are always told that nothing topical will improve acne scars, so how is this possible?
Try it this is all in the peel section of the faq (mega post). Many use tretinorin on here and glycolic is a more gentle peal than tca. So sure for very minor scars it could help. I see their scars still in the pictures they discoloration looks better and they are softened in appearance.
I still think these are very impressive results for "just" a chemical peel with tretinoin. Glycolic is not even a deep peel. It's very encouraging. If it helps even remotely with atrophic scarring, why isn't it recommended more?
The other thing is they didn't even use a peel in this study. They used a 12% glycolic cream. That's crazy to me. But so encouraging.
Reading through the paper, it looks like it was done to 'early scars", which respond better to treatments. Still, some of the pictures look to be quite a noticeable improvement, and given that glycolic and retinoic acids are easy to procure, might be a good method for people to try.
If anything else, it would be a good improvement to the quality of your skin.
I'm definitely incorporating glycolic into my routine now, like you said, if for no other reason than to improve the overall health/quality of my skin. The only thing I want to disagree on is that I'm not so sure these are recent scars, because there's hardly any discoloration in the Before shots, especially in Figures 1, 3 and 4. The erythema has subsided, which to me means these are probably not THAT recent.
Now I just have to decide if I should do daily applications of low percentage glycolic (like in the study) or once a week or biweekly applications of high percentage glycolic. I found another paper that says biweekly applications of between 20% and 70% glycolic were better for improving acne scars than daily application of 15% glycolic.