Sammendrag
BACKGROUND: Psoriasis is a common, chronic, inflammatory disease. Psoriasis requires long time therapy to maintain disease control and psoriasis patients deserve long-term controlled treatment of their disease with optimal safety. Traditional treatment like phototherapy or systemic therapy with cyclosporin, metotrexate and retinoids are not always effective or cause long-term side effects. New biological, which targets pathologic T cell activity, agents like tumor necrosis factor alpha inhibitors and T cell modulators are developed.
OBJECTIVE: Review literature in order to investigate treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis, new versus traditional medicaments.
METHODS: This assignment is based on a review of relevant studies in the Pubmed database.
RESULTS: There is to date no large controlled studies investigating the long term side effects of “biologics” and conclusions regarding long-term safety cannot be drawn.
CONCLUSIONS: There is good evidence that biological agents are efficacious in the treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis. Comparing the side effects for traditional and new agents, shows that new medicaments “biologics” are safer for long term treatment than traditional medicaments.