A new study shows weekly injections of the drug Amevive can significantly reduce the pain, itching, inflammation, and other symptoms of psoriasis without serious side effects. This may be of particular importance to people within our disease community who have psoriatic spondylitis (a condition that involves psoriasis of the skin, and arthritis of the spine and potentially other joints throughout the body). Researcher Mark Lebwohl, MD, of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and colleagues published results in the June issue of The Archives of Dermatology.

Finding effective psoriasis treatments are important because in addition to physical pain, the disease can cause serious psychological effects. "Psoriasis is a life-disabling disorder in which 8% to 10% of patients aged 18 to 54 years actively contemplate suicide because of their disease," states Alice Gottlieb, MD, PhD, of the University of Medicine and Dentistry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.

Earlier this year, Amevive became the first biologic drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. Other psoriasis treatments, such as light therapy and topical creams, are designed to treat the symptoms. Amevive differs from these treatments because it actually targets specific elements of the immune system that cause the inflammation and plaque buildup common in psoriasis.

Clinical trials studied Amevive's effect in psoriasis patients by way of delivering the drug intravenously (I.V.). Yet a new study looked at its effectiveness when given by weekly injections into the thigh muscle.

In this study, 507 adults with chronic psoriasis were randomly assigned to receive either 10mg or 15mg of Amevive or a placebo (saline solution not containing Amevive) per week by injection. Researchers found that the higher dose of Amevive offered the best results. More than half of those who received the higher dose of Amevive had at least a 50% reduction in symptoms compared with only 35% of those getting the placebo. Twelve weeks after the psoriasis treatment had been stopped, psoriasis symptoms remained better than reported before the study, supporting the notion of Amevive as a long-lasting treatment.

The most commonly reported side effects included headache, itching, and infection (i.e. common cold). Amevive works by weakening the immune system so it could increase the risk of infection, although the researchers note that the medication was generally well tolerated and did not cause major problems during the study period.

Recent research has suggested that psoriasis is an immune disorder. New treatments targeting the immune system have the potential for changing the practice of dermatology and "give the hope of long-term safe and effective control of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis," as written by Gottlieb, in an editorial that accompanies the study.

According to the National Psoriasis Foundation, psoriasis is a chronic, inflammatory disease of the skin, scalp, nails, and joints, affecting 1-2% of the U.S. population. The cause of psoriasis is unknown, but most researchers agree that the immune system is somehow mistakenly triggered, which speeds up the growth cycle of skin. A normal skin cell matures and falls off the body's surface in 28 to 30 days, but a psoriatic skin cell takes only three to four days to mature and gathers at the surface to form lesions.

When psoriasis occurs with symptoms of spondylitis, the psoriasis symptoms often precede the arthritis symptoms, sometimes by many years. The severity of the rash does not mirror the severity of the arthritis, and a flare of the rash does not necessarily coincide with an arthritis flare.