Picking up on Prescribing Patterns for Psoriasis: A Real Deal Assessment

We (and our patients) are fortunate to live during a time when we have many safe and effective options to treat a chronic inflammatory skin disease such as Psoriasis. We are reminded of this, nay inundated, with warm and fuzzy headlines in the lay dermatology press that humblebrag said efficacy. However, how does this translate to the real world, when the perfect, neat lines of clinical trials are blurred by practical issues such as access, patient and practitioner perception, and long term use and efficacy? In a JDD Podcast first, we had not one but two investigators share their work and first steps to evaluate just that. Dr. Megan Noe, Instructor of Dermatology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Joel Gelfand, Professor of Dermatology and of Epidemiology, Vice Chair for Clinical Research (Dermatology), and Director of the Psoriasis and Phototherapy Treatment Center at the University of Pennsylvania join us to discuss their study Prescribing Patterns Associated With Biologic Therapies for Psoriasis from a United States Medical Records Databasefrom the August 2019 edition of the JDD. Hear how they formulated this big data dive. Learn which biologics did not get an encore with a refill. Discover which scenarios most often lead our colleagues to use combination therapy and with what. And most importantly, digest Dr. Noe and Gelfands’ approach to picking the right biologic for the right patient. All that and more – I (nail) pity the fool who doesn’t check it out.

• discuss prescribing  patterns associated with biologic therapies for psoriasis
• and utilization of concomitant non-biologic psoriasis therapies in patients on biologics.