Treatment of tinea versicolor with sulfur-salicylic shampoo.

One week of nightly application of sulfur-salicylic acid shampoo as a lotion was evaluated for the treatment of tinea versicolor. One half of the randomly allocated patients used the active preparation and the other half used a bland oil-in-water lotion as a placebo. Three months after completing treatment, nineteen of twenty-two using sulfur-salicylic acid shampoo were still negative by KOH examination, whereas only one of sixteen controls was negative. Skin irritation occurred in a few patients but did not reduce the effectiveness of the treatment.