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Getting To Psoriasis Through The Immune System

Psoriasis Living with Psoriasis

New Therapy For Psoriasis: Are They Safe and Effective?

Summary & Participants

Previous treatments for moderate to severe psoriasis have been known to produce many unwanted side effects. Learn how a new class of drugs called biologic therapy is now offering people with moderate to severe psoriasis new hope with fewer side effects.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Psoriasis is a sometimes painful disease characterized by scaling and inflammation of the skin. It's a condition that causes great discomfort for its many sufferers.

KENNETH GORDON, MD: Psoriasis is a chronic systemic disease that affects the skin and other areas in the body also, including the joints. It manifests itself by well-defined erythematous, we call red, plaques with lots of scale that are very noticeable to patients and to those around them.

ANNOUNCER: Previously thought to be a skin disorder, research has shed new light on the root causes of psoriasis.

DAVID PARISER, MD: It's been through the knowledge of development of the immune system over the last six or eight years where we realize that what we're seeing in terms of the overgrowth or proliferation of the epidermis is the effect, not the cause. And that the cause seems to be the immune disorder as the primary pathologic event.

ANNOUNCER: With that information, the medical community is now turning toward the science of biologics for new ways to alleviate this condition.

DAVID PARISER, MD: Biologics are medications which are developed to specifically treat the immune defects. Biologics have been used for quite some time in treatment of other disorders, notably in treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and in treatment of Crohn's disease, which is an intestinal problem. The same or similar immune defects occur in those diseases, which allow them to be used in psoriasis as well.

ANNOUNCER: Biologics are proteins designed to switch off certain aspects of the immune system.

DAVID PARISER, MD: The biologics work by blocking the interaction between the T-cell and another cell in the body called the antigen-presenting cell, and that interaction is responsible for a release of chemicals called cytokines and others, which account for the development of the lesions that we see in patients with psoriasis.

ANNOUNCER: Currently biologics are a welcome addition to psoriasis treatment. Traditionally, moderate to severe therapies included potent drugs that lower the body's normal immune response. In comparison, biologic therapy may be a safer option.

KENNETH GORDON, MD: What you have to compare these medications to are not topical medications or phototherapy, but in these patients with severe disease, the other immune suppressive drugs that we use for psoriasis today.

Systemic therapy has been in the form of pills, where you take either cyclosporin, methotrexate, or acitretin in the United States. And those pills can treat your psoriasis. However, they're very nonspecific; they can affect many different organs in the body. As we develop newer therapies that are more targeted and more specific for the immune system, we'll hopefully be able to get more effective and safer therapy for the disease.

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