BERLIN — Further findings from the PSORRO study suggest that oral roflumilast may be an option for treating patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis, particularly if they have a high body mass index (BMI).
Reporting secondary outcomes from the investigator-led trial at the annual meeting of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV), Alexander Egeberg, MD, PhD, DMSc, noted that "clinically significant weight loss" was seen among patients who were treated with oral roflumilast, 500 µg once daily, vs those receiving placebo.
Indeed, after 12 weeks of therapy, 1 in 3 patients treated with oral roflumilast experienced at least a 5% drop in their baseline body weight vs no patients who received placebo (35% vs 0%; P < .05).
Additionally, a respective 17% vs 0% of patients lost 10% or more of their body weight, and 4% vs 0% lost 15% or more of their baseline body weight at 12 weeks.
After 24 weeks' treatment, a substantial percentage of patients still had ≥ 5%, ≥ 10%, or ≥ 15% weight loss, at 30%, 17%, and 13% for oral roflumilast compared with 9%, 0%, and 0% for placebo, respectively.
"We saw that the higher baseline weight correlated with the proportion of weight loss, so that the more heavy patients at baseline also were the ones who experienced the greatest weight loss," said Egeberg, who is professor of dermatology at the University of Copenhagen and a senior consultant at the Department of Dermatology at Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark.
