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New Therapy For Psoriasis: Are They Safe and Effective?

Psoriasis Psoriasis Basics

Getting To Psoriasis Through The Immune System

Summary & Participants

Once thought to be a skin disorder, psoriasis is now understood to be a condition originating in the immune system. Although there have been some effective treatment options for people living with this condition, few have focused on the root cause of the disease. Learn how the relatively new science of biologic therapy is the changing the way doctors treat psoriasis.

Medically Reviewed On: July 11, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Human skin is the largest organ in the body, and when something goes wrong, the results can be devastating. Just ask any of the estimated 5.5 million Americans who suffer from psoriasis.

DAVID PARISER, MD: It can be a very mild condition with a few little scaly patches on the elbows or knees, or it can be quite severe, involving large, widespread areas of the body with red, scaly, itchy and sometimes painful patches and plaques.

ANNOUNCER: It is a condition that is now understood to result from a malfunctioning of the immune system.

KENNETH GORDON, MD: We don't know exactly what sets off the immune system in psoriasis. Clearly there are genetic factors that make some people more susceptible to the disease. They'll start having this reaction that cause the skin to develop a hyperproliferative state where the cells start growing too quickly. And therefore that'll show up as psoriasis.

ANNOUNCER: But a new type of treatment called biologic therapy is now offering new hope for people living with psoriasis with moderate to severe symptoms.

DAVID PARISER, MD: What is new and exciting for patients with psoriasis and for the physicians who treat them is we now have a new class of biologic drugs which have been specifically developed and engineered to treat psoriasis by specifically targeting the defective immune response, and this will give both physicians and their patients a wider choice of medications in order to help them treat the disease.

ANNOUNCER: Unlike traditional treatments, biologics work by treating not just symptoms but by getting to the core problem of abnormal T-cell activity, thus modifying the disease process itself.

DAVID PARISER, MD: In order to develop the skin lesions of psoriasis, there has to be an activation of the T-cell by an antigen-presenting cell. The T-cell is the actor that produces the inflammation through release of cytokines and various other substances. Biologics work by blocking the interaction of the antigen-presenting cell and the T-cell, or by blocking the inflammatory cytokines that's the product of the T-cells after they have been elaborated.

KENNETH GORDON, MD: Remissions in psoriasis can be induced by deactivating the T-cells, the primary immune cells that cause psoriasis. And by eliminating these cells and reducing their activity, hopefully patients will attain long-term remissions of their disease.

ANNOUNCER: Biologic therapy could be a welcome departure from other treatment options.

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