Efficacy and Safety of Secukinumab in Treating Psoriasis Vulgaris

Abstract: Introduction. Plaque psoriasis (psoriasis vulgaris) is a chronic disease and the most common type of psoriasis. It is charactarized by well-defined areas with silvery scaling, erythema, puritus and sometimes pain. Psoriasis affects about 1.5 - 3 % of the world population. Patients with psoriasis often suffer with comorbidies which makes drug therapy essential in relieving symptoms. Mild to moderate disease is treated with topical therapy such as corticosteroids and retinoid creams and with phototherapy. More severe disease is treated with systemic therapy e.g. methotrexate, cyclopsorine and retinoids. Patients who do not respond well to these treatments can be put on antibody therapy, e.g., secukinumab. Secukinumab is a monoclonal antibody that specifically targets the IL-17A. It is used to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. Secukinumab binds to IL-17A and inhibits it to interact with IL-17R. This leads to downregulation of immune response and symptom relieving. Other monoclonal antibodies that are used are risankizumab that binds to the p19 subunit of IL-23 and ustekinumab that binds to the p40 subunit of IL-12 and IL-23. Clinical psoriasis symptoms are evaluated with the Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) from 0 till 72 and with the Inverstigator’s Global Assessment (IGA) from 0 till 5. Method. This thesis is a literature review with an aim to evaluate the efficacy and safety of secukinumab in treating psoriasis vulgaris. The search for articles was done in PubMed with the search words ‘’secukinumab’’ and ‘’plaque psoriasis’’. Included articles were RCT-studies published between 2014 and 2022. Moreover, these studies used the PASI and the IGA scoring system. This thesis excluded studies with children. Overall, this thesis included 6 trials reported in 5 articles. Results. The trials ERASURE, FIXTURE and CAIN demonstrated that 300 mg and 150 mg secukinumab per day were effective in treating moderate to severe psoriasis vulgaris compared to  placebo and etarnecept. The trials CLARITY and CLEAR demonstrated that 300 mg secukinumab was effective in treating moderate to severe psoriasis vulgaris compared to ustekinumab. The trial IMMerge demonstrated that risankizumab was superior in treating psoriasis vulgaris compared to secukinumab. Most of the adverse effects were mild and moderate and the most common reported were nasopharyngitis, upper respiratory tract infection, diarrhea and headache.Conclusion. Secukinumab demonstrates good efficacy and safety in the treatment of moderate to severe psoriasis in patients who have not received a satisfactory result from other drugs therapies.