Psoriasis 2015: Clinical Pearls

Bruce Strober, MD, PhD

Dr Strober provides us with some important takeaway points from his psoriasis lecture…

• Apremilast achieves PASI 75 in approximately 30% of patients after 16 weeks of therapy.
• Apremilast has FDA-approval for the treatment of both psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis.
• Apremilast also has been shown to provide improvement for nail and scalp psoriasis, and the reduction of pruritus.
• Apremilast is associated with a >5% weight loss in between 10-20% of treated patients.
• Secukinumab is the FDA-approved biologic medication with currently the highest level of clinical efficacy of all the self-injectable medications.
• A side effect of secukinumab is oral candidiasis, which is usually mild and occurs in up to 5% of patients.
• IL-23 inhibition is a future mechanism of action for psoriasis therapy that shows very high efficacy in early clinical trials.
• Tofacitinib inhibits JAK kinases and will be an oral drug approved for psoriasis.
• Tofacitinib increases the risk for varicella-zoster.
• Both secukinumab, apremilast and tofacitinib are all drugs that variably treat psoriatic arthritis.