Dr April Armstrong Explains Differing Benefits of IL-17, IL-23 Inhibitors for Psoriasis

April Armstrong, MD, MPH, professor and chief of dermatology at UCLA, highlights the different benefits of IL-17 and IL-23 inhibitors for treating patients with psoriasis.

Transcript

What are some main differences between IL-17 and IL-23 inhibitors, and is there a preference when treating psoriasis?

IL-23 and IL-17 inhibitors are excellent treatments for patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. I think that one of the key differentiating factors between the 2 of them is that IL-17 inhibitors have very good response in psoriatic arthritis [PsA]; they work very well for both the peripheral as well as axial [PsA]. Now for the IL-23 inhibitors, most of them are also approved for PsA, so we do have some data in that regard as well, but I will say for someone who has severe [PsA], IL-17 inhibitors probably as a class work a bit better in that regard.

IL-23 inhibitors really shine in terms of their fantastic safety record, they are well tolerated by patients, and the safety profile over time is also very good. They also have long-term persistence in the real-world studies, which we have seen, and that is very helpful for patients because we want our patients to be able to not switch from one medication to another and be able to stay on the same medication as long as it works. And I think the IL-23 class as a whole have pretty good persistence of response. In addition to that, we also see that the IL-23 class of medications is really fantastic in terms of infrequent injections. The injection interval is usually between every 2 months to about every 3 months, so you really only get a few doses during the year.

Now, our newer IL-17 inhibitors, and I will say one that was just approved yesterday has the option of also doing 1 injection every 2 months, and that's bimekizumab. So, really hot off the press, we have a new IL-17 inhibitor that just got approved by the FDA. As you can see, the landscape for biologics for patients with psoriasis looks really excellent. We have a number of different options to offer for our patients as well as our clinicians.