Topical treatments are first-line therapies, prescribed to most patients with chronic plaque psoriasis. This non-interventional, longitudinal study examined data regarding the treatment pathways of French patients with psoriasis vulgaris using a pharmacy database. From this database, patients with an initial prescription of a topical treatment of interest (ie, calcipotriol alone and/or calcipotriol/betamethasone) between March and October 2013 were included in the study. The primary objective was to capture the switch from a topical treatment, from treatment initiation to receipt of a systemic therapy over a period of 3 years. A total of 26 605 patients were included in the study. The mean age was 58.5 years. The majority of patients (94.7%) maintained topical treatment during the 3 years, receiving a mean of 1.1 different therapies. Of 1400 patients who switched to a systemic therapy, 93.1% switched to a non-biological (mean time to switching >400 days), maintaining this for the remainder of the follow-up period. The most commonly prescribed first non-biological systemic therapy was methotrexate (37%). Less than 1% of patients switched to a biological therapy during follow up. Cohort analyses suggest that patients progressing to use of a systemic therapy within 12 months were those with more severe disease. There was a low rate of transition from topical to systemic therapies in patients with chronic plaque psoriasis during the first 3 years of treatment, suggesting stability of disease severity over time with topical therapy alone, potentially due to good patient adherence.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.