Patients with atopic dermatitis report positive, sustained outcomes with dupilumab

Key takeaways:

• Patients reported improvements in Patient-Oriented Eczema Measure, DLQI, itch and pain scores.
• 66.8% experienced one or more adverse events.

Dupilumab demonstrated sustained effectiveness across patientreported outcome measures in adult and pediatric individuals with atopic dermatitis, according to a study.

“Previous placebo-controlled studies of up to 1 year and open-label extension studies of up to 4 years have demonstrated the long-term effectiveness and safety of dupilumab,” Junfen Zhang, MD, PhD, of the department of dermatology at University Medical Center Groningen in The Netherlands at the time of the study and currently a postdoctoral researcher at Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote. “However, clinical trial populations may not fully represent patients encountered in routine clinical practice due to controlled conditions of trials.”

In other words, a clinical trial setting may not show the disease burden that patients experience over time. To evaluate the real-life effectiveness of dupilumab long-term, the researchers conducted a prospective, multicenter, observational cohort study.

The study included 1,223 patients (mean age, 38.5 years; 56.8% male) with moderate to severe AD. The researchers collected patient-reported outcome measures from the BioDay registry. Adult patients (n = 1,108) were treated with dupilumab for up to 5 years, whereas pediatric patients (n = 115) were treated for up to 2.75 years.

After 1 year of treatment, the mean Patient-Oriented Eczema Measure score in adult patients decreased from 19.9 to between 7.8 and 8.7, DLQI scores decreased from 13.5 to between 3.5 to 4.2, itch scores decreased from 6.9 to between 2.9 to 3.1 and pain scores decreased from 4.1 to between 0.9 to 1.2.

After 1 year of treatment among pediatric patients, POEM scores decreased from 17.9 to between 8.9 and 10.9, DQLI scores decreased from 10.9 to between 4.4 and 6.4, itch scores decreased from 6.2 to between 3 and 3.7, and pain scores decreased from 4.1 to between 0.8 and 1.7.

At baseline, adult patients reported that atopic dermatitis had a 40.1% impairment on their work life. At follow-up, patients reported only a 13.3% to 16.3% work impairment.

Patients with class 1 obesity and those who were itch-dominant generally had less favorable treatment responses.

“[This suggests] the need for future studies to identify optimal treatment approaches for these specific subgroups, such as exploring more effective treatment regimens and novel therapeutic options,” the authors wrote.

Of all patients, 66.8% experienced one or more adverse events, 33.7% of which were conjunctivitis. Nevertheless, the authors concluded that dupilumab showed rapid and sustained effectiveness in improving various aspects of patient-reported outcomes in both adult and pediatric patients.