JAK Inhibitors Are Revolutionizing Dermatology Field, Says Dr Mona Shahriari

Mona Shahriari, MD, assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Yale University and associate director of clinical trials at Central Connecticut Dermatology, explains how the increasing use of Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors is "revolutionizing" the treatment of dermatologic conditions and how itch is a major symptom that patients present with at the dermatologist office.

Shahriari is discussing the role of JAK inhibitors in dermatology at the 2023 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference, in the session, "Baby Got JAK: Case Conversations on The Role of JAK Inhibitors in
Dermatology."

Transcript

How do you see the role of JAK inhibitors growing in the dermatology field?

I think what we're understanding now is that JAK inhibitors are revolutionizing how we're going to be treating a lot of dermatologic conditions over the next several years. In this session, we're going to highlight some of those other dermatological conditions that are not currently FDA approved, and also the impact of JAK inhibitors not just on efficacy in terms of skin disease improvement, but also in terms of itch, because itch is a huge player for our patients with a whole host of different diseases. In the presentation, we're going to actually highlight that [for] the majority of office visits to a dermatologist, itch is one of the key things that patients are complaining about.

The diseases that we're going to really highlight [include] obviously atopic dermatitis—you have to talk about that when you're talking about JAK inhibition—but some other arenas like prurigo nodularis, there are some emerging clinical trials there, [and] lichen planus, there are some case series that have shown quite a bit of promise. Lichen sclerosus is another condition, super itchy and uncomfortable for our patients, but again, JAK inhibition has proven to be effective.

Along the lines of other disease processes, we're going to be briefly talking about alopecia areata, vitiligo, as well as hidradenitis [suppurativa]. Since the key focus is itch, we're not going to go into those in a heavy amount of detail, but we're still going to highlight the emerging clinical trials for these particular disease states and how JAK inhibition can really help our patients in terms of disease control, short term and long term.

Can you elaborate on how patients are presenting to their dermatologists with itch?

Many of those patients don't even know they have a dermatologic disease. Their primary care considers itch or pruritis within the realm of dermatology, so they refer them to us, but it's with a deep dive into the rest of their medical history, doing an examination, that we can better understand where is this itch coming from. Is it a primary process from the skin disease? Is it a secondary process where they're constantly scratching and jumpstarting that itch-scratch cycle? It's a little learning on both of our ends, both for us as the clinicians as well as for the patients, to figure out where the nidus of that itch is.