Prescription Cold Sore Remedies - Are They Worth It?

By Lars Muchom

Prescription-strength cold sore treatments are generally the most-effective oral herpes treatments available, and stand alone as the only FDA-approved medications that are readily available to people that have issues with problematic, persisting oral herpes outbreaks.

While they do have a number of downsides (especially significant costs, in addition to the requirement for a prescription from your doctor) as compared with their non-prescription, and house cure competition, their scientifically-tested record of success ensures they may be worth the added price and inconvenience for many desperate herpes sufferers.

Prescribed antiviral creams are applied topically to cold sore fever blisters, and usually produce a practically rapid decline in discomfort and swelling. They are additionally looked at to be efficient agents in the procedure of healing, typically cutting a couple of days off the amount of time needed for the tissue to mend itself.

The leading, FDA-approved prescribed brand names are Denavir (penciclovir 1 %) and Zovirax (acyclovir 5 %).

It's arguable about which brand name is the most effective (researches appear to suggest that this depends, to a huge degree, upon the specific user), however both antiviral creams have some high success in lowering the extent and degree of cold sore outbreaks.

A considerable difference worth mentioning can be found in the kind of the dosing cycles required for the two medications. Denavir requires topical application on the area influenced by the herpes episode every couple of hours over a duration of four days.

What a pain to use.

Zovirax, nevertheless, is applied 5 times each day (about once every three hours) during a comparable timespan (4 days).

Zovirax's less-rigorous dosing timetable has made it more preferred with patients since it came on the marketplace in 2002, but simplicity of usage appears to be its only showed edge over Denavir.

As discussed, the medicines match each other in performance, and identifying which one is better suited to you is normally wisest left to your doctor.

While antiviral creams work well for the therapy of cold sores after they appear, antiviral pills stand out at halting episodes before the scorchings develop.

The best-known brands, Famvir (famciclovir) and Valtrex (valacyclovir), have both been shown by FDA testing to be effective at curtailing viral dropping of the HSV-1 virus all with the very early phases of an episode.

In laymen's terms, this suggests that using them at the initial tip of an episode will likely stop the episode from aggravating.

For the bulk of clients, the biggest drawback to using prescribed treatments is price. A popular over the counter medication like Abreva (the only FDA-approved antiviral cream sold without prescribed) offers for as little as $ 18 USD.

A monthly supply of a prescription drug is typically three-to-four times that quantity.

Prescription treatments cost more, and their level of customer contentment has a propensity to be rather marginal. The primary explanation for this is that the more frequently you use them, the more the infection comes to be immune to the medicine and the less efficient they are.

Still the finest option is the applying of natural home cold sore solutions - if you wish leading outcomes for the least cost. The infection never ever comes to be invulnerable to them. Treatments made use of during the Roman days are still really effective today.

It is also beneficial to adjust your treatment based on where you are with your sore. Here is a great article listing the eight cold sore stages and symptoms. It will benefit you greatly to check this out.