Whether you have been living with psoriatic disease for decades or were diagnosed only recently, you probably know that it is a lifelong companion that never seems to be quiet, even when it is in the background. But what if you could put your psoriasis on pause?
Wilson Liao, M.D., director of the Psoriasis and Skin Treatment Center at University of California, San Francisco, talked to the National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF) about what remission means for psoriatic disease and how it may be possible to achieve remission. “Remission generally refers to a disease no longer being active or bothersome to a person,” he says. “However, different patients may interpret remission in different ways.”
Among people who felt their psoriasis was in remission, 73.3% had 1-3% body surface area (BSA) with psoriasis involvement, while only 22.7% had full clearance (0% BSA), according to the 2019 NPF Annual Survey. [1]
“Achieving minimally bothersome psoriasis is now more than ever possible with the large number of psoriasis treatments available, including the biologic therapies,” says Dr. Liao. He adds that psoriatic arthritis (PsA) treatments still have a ways to go before patients experience full improvement of their symptoms.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like Remission?
A review of research studies that define remission in psoriasis found 41 different definitions, with most dependent on the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) rather than BSA. [2] With such a variety of definitions, it is difficult for people with psoriasis, providers, researchers, and others to all be on the same page.
To facilitate the generation of a single definition for remission in 2018, NPF launched the Remission and Cure Consensus Project, which also aims to define what “cure” means for psoriatic disease. The initial work included a variety of stakeholders, such as insurers, researchers, and industry experts, to discover how psoriasis remission applies to the stakeholders and their work.
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Many Voices, One Mission: Nehal N. Mehta
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Public Health and Psoriatic Disease
