Tremfya efficacious in psoriasis in patients with skin of color

Key takeaways:

• After one dose of Tremfya patients experienced significant improvements in body and scalp psoriasis.
• The VISIBLE study included non-white patients across Fitzpatrick skin types I to IV.

Tremfya showed fast and efficacious psoriasis clearance in patients with skin of color in a phase 3b trial, Jannsen announced in a press release.

Aiming to address a lack of equity in psoriasis diagnosis and treatment, the VISIBLE trial included non-white patients with Fitzpatrick skin types I to IV.

“VISIBLE reinforces that to overcome the barriers of underrepresentation, undertreatment and lack of access to care that many people of color with plaque psoriasis face, additional data about the disease journey are needed to improve treatment outcomes and quality of life in people with skin of color,” Mona Shahriari, MD, from Central Connecticut Dermatology and a member of the VISIBLE steering committee, said in the release. “In addition to insightful data, VISIBLE has provided the medical community with key learnings around study design and representative clinical imagery that have the potential to tangibly address the unmet needs of a diverse psoriasis patient population.”

The multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial included adult patients with moderate to severe body and/or scalp psoriasis who were randomly assigned to receive subcutaneous Tremfya (guselkumab) 100 mg at weeks 0, 4 and 12 and then every 8 weeks, or placebo at weeks 0, 4 and 12 followed by a switch to Tremfya at week 16 and 20 and then every 8 weeks.

An IGA of clear (0) or minimal (1) was achieved by 74% of those in the Tremfya group at week 16 compared with 0% of those in the placebo group. Additionally, 57.1% of those in the treatment arm achieved at least a 90% improvement in the PASI compared with 3.8% of the placebo arm.

Body Surface Area improvement in 77.9% of the Tremfya-treated patients after three doses compared with 0.9% of those treated with placebo and a significantly greater improvement from baseline in PASI scores was also observed in the treatment arm.

Complete skin clearance, as measured by IGA 0 and a 100% improvement in PASI, was achieved by 29.9% of the Tremfya group compared with 0% of the placebo group at week 16.

In scalp psoriasis, 71.9% of patients who received Tremfya achieved complete scalp clearance compared with 10% of the placebo group at week 16. After one dose, the mean percentage improvement from baseline Psoriasis Scalp Severity Index was 53.8% in the treatment arm and 12.3% in the placebo group, and complete scalp clearance was reached by 26.3% of the treatment arm and 0% of the placebo arm.