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Linked Article: Alavi et al. Br J Dermatol 2022; 186:803–813. Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a rare chronic skin condition with painful nodules (bumps) and abscesses (liquid‐filled lesions) that may result in tunnel formation and scarring. There are currently limited options to treat HS, and responses to medication and duration of responses varies among patients. The authors of this study are from the USA and Canada. An oral drug (INCB054707) that targets a process called 'Janus kinase‐mediated inflammation' was tested in two clinical trials of adult patients with HS. Across the two studies, 45 patients received one of four dosage strengths of INCB054707 or a placebo pill (which looked like the drug being tested but did not contain any medicine) for 8 weeks. They checked for adverse side‐effects. The number of HS lesions over time were measured to see if the treatment was working. Patients were asked to describe their worst skin pain and quality of life at various times during the study. In patients treated with INCB054707 the side‐effects were generally mild, and only one of the 36 patients treated with INCB054707 stopped taking the drug completely for safety reasons. Patients taking higher doses of the drug had improved skin condition at the end of 8 weeks compared with those who received placebo. More patients who took INCB054707 also had less skin pain and felt that their quality of life was better during treatment compared with the patients who got placebo pills only. In conclusion, this may be a possible new treatment for HS. Additional studies with larger numbers of patients are underway. Linked Article: Alavi et al. Br J Dermatol 2022; 186:803–813. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linked Article: van Zuuren et al. Br J Dermatol 2021; 185:36–51. Acne is a common skin disease that causes a lot of burden and distress. Acne can be treated with medication applied to the skin (e.g. creams) and with oral medication (e.g. tablets). It is important to know how satisfied people with acne actually are with their treatment. So this should be measured in studies that evaluate acne treatments. Ideally, all researchers should measure patient satisfaction with acne treatment in exactly the same way. Only then those studies and treatments can be compared. Our aim was to find out how researchers measured treatment satisfaction in acne, and if there were any methods that could be recommended. We, a team from the Netherlands and Canada, found 255 studies that mentioned satisfaction with acne treatment. Of these, there was only one study that described a method of how patients' treatment satisfaction with acne medication could be measured. However, we judged that method not scientifically good enough to recommend. Sixty‐six studies appeared, after thorough examination, not to report treatment satisfaction or were published more than once. The remaining 188 studies did measure patient satisfaction: 91 studies on treatment of acne with medication and 97 on treating acne scars. Some used one question, some a questionnaire. There were many differences in how the questions could be answered and scored. This makes comparing studies on patient satisfaction with acne treatment very difficult. The conclusion of our study is that there is not yet a method that measures patients' satisfaction with treatments in acne that is good enough to be used by all researchers. We recommend that such a method is developed and then used in all studies so that in the future the results of those studies on treatment satisfaction can be compared. Linked Article: van Zuuren et al. Br J Dermatol 2021; 185:36–51. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]