Psoriasis Treatments in Non-White Racial Ethnic Groups

In this exclusive MedPage Today video, Andrew Alexis, MD, chair of dermatology at Mount Sinai West and Mount Sinai St. Luke’s in New York City, shares some of his perspectives from both the Skin of Color Society’s recent annual meeting and the American Academy of Dermatology’s recent annual meeting.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

Preceding the [AAD 2019] meeting, I was the scientific co-chair of a professional organization called the Skin of Color Society, where we have an annual meeting where we update the community about advances in the treatment of skin and hair and nail disorders that disproportionally affect people of color. This was our 15th annual meeting and it was, in my opinion, one of the best. We had interesting presentations on some genetic associations with a scarring form of hair loss called CCCA, which disproportionally affects women of African ancestry.

We had an exciting presentation by Dr. Emma Guttman from Mount Sinai about differences in atopic dermatitis in darker skin types, including differences in immunophenotype with a skewing towards IL-17 in East Asian populations and a skewing towards Th2 and Th22 in African Americans. This is some exciting work that will improve our understanding of managing atopic dermatitis for diverse patient populations. We also had an interesting presentation from Dr. Ncoza Dlova from Durban, South Africa who gave us sort of a broad overview of the state of dermatology in the continent of Africa. All the presentations were extremely well received, and I was proud to be a co-chair of that.

Also at the meeting, at the academy meeting itself, I had a couple posters related to psoriasis in specific subpopulations. One paper looking at a topical agent that contains halobetasol and tazarotene as a fixed combination used for four weeks in psoriasis patients. We looked specifically at the Hispanic subgroup of a larger phase III trial and found significant results in terms of investigator global assessment over a four-week period in our Hispanic patient population compared to vehicle.

Studies like this are important because there’s really a dearth of information about psoriasis treatments in non-white racial ethnic groups, and so with studies like this, we can advance our understanding of any nuances in managing psoriasis across the diverse spectrum of racial ethnic groups and skin types.