Drug survival of biologic treatments in Turkish patients with psoriasis

Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated disease deriving from a polygenic predisposition. Treatment paradigm of the moderate to severe psoriasis has changed in the last two decades as biologics have been developed. Real-world data concerning biologics in the treatment vary from country to country. We aimed to investigate the efficacy and drug survival of biologic agents in patients treated in our clinic in Turkey. Data for 211 biologic protocols were examined for 125 patients treated with a biologic at least once for a minimum duration of 16 weeks at our department. The drug survival rate for 3 years was highest among ustekinumab (UST) users. The primary failure rate in the present study was higher among tumor necrosis factor-alpha inhibitors compared to UST (P < .0001). The higher primary failure rate was found in etanercept users and the highest secondary failure rate was observed in infliximab, while the lowest primary and secondary failure rates were determined in UST users. UST use and articular involvement emerged as significant positive predictors of drug survival in naïve patients. Our study is the first study presenting real-life data and biologic survival in the treatment of psoriasis in Turkey, and UST exhibited significantly higher drug survival scores, particularly in naive patients.