Experience of abrocitinib in atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Atopic dermatitis is an autoinflammatory, genetically determined, itchy disease characterized by a long, relapsing course and a sharp decrease in the patient’s quality of life. Atopic dermatitis is caused by a complex interaction of immune dysregulation, epidermal gene mutations, and multi-environmental factors that affect the skin, causing intense itchy rashes. The disease often occurs among young children and subsequently has age-related clinical features. Currently, the treatment of atopic dermatitis has a wide range of options, including drugs from the group of small molecules recently registered in the Russian Federation. The drugs are intended for patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis. Baricitinib, abrocitinib and upadacitinib as Janus kinase inhibitors from the small molecule group have already demonstrated good tolerability, safety and a pronounced clinical effect in the vast majority of patients with atopic dermatitis in available clinical trials. The first clinical experience with the use of abrocitinib in adult patients with atopic dermatitis is presented. The interest of the presented clinical cases lies in the demonstration of high clinical efficacy and safety of mono- and combination therapy with the Janus kinase inhibitor abrocitinib. Despite the short period of treatment and observation (4 weeks), objective severity of atopic dermatitis manifestations (SCORAD index 60 points) and sharp decrease in the patients' quality of life (DLQI index 20 points), a reduction of clinical parameters exceeding 60% was achieved at a dose of 200 mg daily. During the whole observation period no adverse clinical reactions or changes in laboratory parameters were registered against the background of abrocitinib administration. The pilot results of abrocitinib use are encouraging and provide grounds for conducting longer and larger-scale studies to investigate the efficacy of the drug for its inclusion in the combination therapy of patients with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis.