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Treat‐to‐target (T2T) recommendations for the use of systemic therapies (including biologics) in patients with moderate‐to‐severe plaque psoriasis have been published by a few groups of experts worldwide. However, there remains considerable variability in the choice of target severity measure and timing of milestones. To develop consensus recommendations for implementing T2T strategies for the management of moderate‐to‐severe plaque psoriasis using biologics. An expert group of Canadian dermatologists (the Committee) convened to develop a T2T consensus statement. They held a virtual meeting during which a preliminary set of criteria was created. These criteria were then reviewed, modified, and recirculated until unanimous agreement was achieved. The Committee agreed that defining treatment target is multidimensional and should reflect objective severity measures, as well as clinician and patient‐reported outcomes. The Committee unanimously proposes a criterion‐based system for determining the achievement of treatment target. The proposed T2T approach presented here provides a clinical framework for defining treatment success, measuring progress toward treatment success, recognizing when treatment modifications are warranted, and recommending treatment optimization strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topical treatments are first‐line therapies, prescribed to most patients with chronic plaque psoriasis. This non‐interventional, longitudinal study examined data regarding the treatment pathways of French patients with psoriasis vulgaris using a pharmacy database. From this database, patients with an initial prescription of a topical treatment of interest (ie, calcipotriol alone and/or calcipotriol/betamethasone) between March and October 2013 were included in the study. The primary objective was to capture the switch from a topical treatment, from treatment initiation to receipt of a systemic therapy over a period of 3 years. A total of 26 605 patients were included in the study. The mean age was 58.5 years. The majority of patients (94.7%) maintained topical treatment during the 3 years, receiving a mean of 1.1 different therapies. Of 1400 patients who switched to a systemic therapy, 93.1% switched to a non‐biological (mean time to switching >400 days), maintaining this for the remainder of the follow‐up period. The most commonly prescribed first non‐biological systemic therapy was methotrexate (37%). Less than 1% of patients switched to a biological therapy during follow up. Cohort analyses suggest that patients progressing to use of a systemic therapy within 12 months were those with more severe disease. There was a low rate of transition from topical to systemic therapies in patients with chronic plaque psoriasis during the first 3 years of treatment, suggesting stability of disease severity over time with topical therapy alone, potentially due to good patient adherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psoriasis impacts the quality of life (QoL) by disrupting overall health and social life. Thus, the use of a QoL evaluation item is crucial in assessing a therapeutic regimen. Also, faster improvements in QoL lead to better patient compliance, but very few studies compare psoriasis traditional and biologic therapies timing. To evaluate how much different systemic therapies improve disease severity and QoL, a retrospective analysis was performed on 56 patients. Subjects were administered different drugs and their vital statistics, psoriasis area severity index (PASI) and PSOdisk were collected at baseline and after 30 days. We found a moderate correlation between PASI and PSOdisk score with (r):.62. In terms of clinical scores improvement after 30 days, Ustekinumab turned out to be the fastest therapy available, while cyclosporine, among the systemic therapies available, appeared as highly competitive if not better than other biologic therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]