Original articleApremilast for moderate hidradenitis suppurativa: Results of a randomized controlled trial
Section snippets
Patients
Patients who were at least 18 years of age with moderate HS, defined as a HS-PGA score of 3, were enrolled. Additionally, patients were required to have at least 4 inflammatory lesions (ie, abscesses, draining sinuses/tunnels, or inflammatory nodules in at least 2 anatomic locations). Patients receiving systemic antibiotics or immunosuppressive/immunomodulating therapy were required to stop treatment at least 28 days before baseline and until the end of study. Patients were excluded if they had
Patients
Enrollment occurred between February and August 2017, and a 16-week follow-up was completed in December 2017. In total, 21 patients were randomized, of whom 20 received at least 1 dose of study medication and were included in the intention-to-treat population. Of these, 18 (90%) completed the week 16 follow-up visit (Fig 1). Of the 15 patients receiving apremilast, 2 (13%) discontinued the study: 1 patient discontinued between week 4 and week 8 because of personal circumstances (travel distance
Discussion
The main finding from this study was a clinically meaningful improvement of moderate HS after treatment with apremilast at a dose of 30 mg twice per day for 16 weeks. Apremilast significantly decreased disease activity as measured by the AN count, and 53.3% of patients receiving apremilast achieved the HiSCR in comparison with none of the patients receiving placebo. In addition, apremilast for 16 weeks was well tolerated by patients with moderate HS. According to the study protocol, the
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Funding sources: Sponsored by Celgene.
Disclosure: Dr van der Zee is an advisory board member for AbbVie, InflaRX, and Galderma. Dr Prens is a consultant, speaker, and/or principal investigator and/or has received grants from Abbvie, Amgen, Biogen, Celgene, Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Pfizer, and UCB. Dr van Doorn is a consultant, speaker, and/or principal investigator and/or has received grants from Abbvie, Celgene, Eli Lilly and Company, Janssen-Cilag, Novartis, Pfizer, Cutanea Life Sciences, and Idera Pharmaceuticals. Dr Vossen has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
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