Myth: Psoriasis is a disease that will impact someone for the entire lifetime, there is no cure.
Truth: This is false.
Psoriasis is an inflammatory skin disease where the body’s immune cells attack themself. Psoriasis affects approximately 2% of adults and is associated with a poor quality of life as is often seen in those with obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and metabolic syndrome. Psoriasis is a persistent skin condition with a number of treatments available. Some of these treatments include antibodies to attack immune cells responsible for the inflammatory response in the body. One example is ustekinumab, which targets a subunit in interleukin-23 (IL-23). Previous research has shown that this drug is safe, well-tolerated, and effective in treating psoriasis patients.
Recently, a clinical trial compared the efficacy onset, and duration of clinical response between ustekinumab and another antibody drug, risankizumab. In this study, patients were administered one of the two antibodies and were analyzed for their responses. Although both drugs prove to be effective against arises in more than half of the patients, it was found that usenkinumab was more effective. As well, it was found that patients who were administered usenkinumab had both faster and longer benefits in response to this drug, in comparison to riskankizumab.
Read more about the effectiveness of different antibody treatments in psoriasis here.
Reference
- Papp KA, Blauvelt A, Bukhalo M, et al. Risankizumab versus ustekinumab for moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis. New England Journal of Medicine. 2017;376(16):1551-1560. doi:10.1056/nejmoa1607017
