VIDEO: Interesting developments in the psoriatic arthritis pipeline

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Believe it or not, there are additional meds that keep popping up that we are trying to learn about. And one of the ones that comes to mind is bimekizumab, which is an IL-17 inhibitor. It is not the first IL-17 inhibitor, but there are two others available in psoriatic arthritis. However, this one, which is not quite yet approved, so it's in the pipeline getting very close to approval, is an IL-17A and F inhibitor. So it is not just an IL-17A inhibitor. And we're very excited because the preliminary data that we see in abstract form has really shown us that patients with psoriatic arthritis that there's great efficacy in both skin and joints. So I think this is a player to look out for. I think we are going to find ourselves, you know, being interested in using this particular medication.

There's also a TYK2 inhibitor, deucravacitinib, which I had mentioned a little bit earlier. This is currently approved for psoriasis, but not yet approved for psoriatic arthritis. So that's why I put them in interesting developments. I think this also has potential, it has very good skin efficacy and, you know, unfortunately many of these newer medications, the IL-23 inhibitors, the JAK inhibitors, the skin is just really doing very well, meaning it can hit PASI 100, which is, you know, almost clear, while in the joints, we're not quite seeing that same, you know, joint clearance, you know, like an ACR 100. And so, you know, the jury will still be out on how we use it, but it's really great to have options where the skin's disease manifestations can really be doing well with these drugs, and then we have to see how they do with our joint disease. We are now, you know, getting more familiar with some of these JAK inhibitors 'cause we have a lot of experience in the rheumatoid arthritis world where it's used, you know, mainly for joints. So I think we, you know, need more experience with these.

The second area of interesting development is a more holistic approach, I think, to chronic disease. We now have really embraced the concept of wellness strategies, meaning we understand now that chronic diseases also need to have a holistic approach where we're looking at a patient's lifestyle, you know, modifications that can be done. So not in all areas, but if somebody's stress is higher than normal, then, you know, maybe mindfulness strategies become more important. If somebody is unable to sleep well or if somebody, you know, finds themselves, you know, really not moving as much as they should be, changing some of these lifestyle habits, depending on where they are, becomes really important to their overall, you know, patient outcomes in terms of how they're gonna do with this chronic disease. So I do think that therapeutics is really important, but I also think that there's another side where patients can also help themselves with these chronic diseases by really looking honestly at their own lifestyle interventions and getting the appropriate help for whichever lifestyle. Sometimes it could be all of them, sometimes it could be one or two of 'em. They don't have to do everything all at once. But I do think that rheumatologists now play a bigger role in really incorporating them to understand how lifestyle changes, both in diet, exercise, mindfulness, and sleep can affect their disease as well.