Complete lesion clearance is important to patients with psoriasis.
To conduct a network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of biologic agents available for psoriasis in Japan, using mixed-treatment comparisons.
MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched to identify randomized clinical trials (placebo-controlled or head-to-head) of infliximab, adalimumab, ustekinumab, secukinumab, ixekizumab, brodalumab, risankizumab or guselkumab in adult patients with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis published in English between 01 January 2000 and 31 August 2019. We assessed the proportion of patients who achieved a 100 %, 90 % and 75 % reduction in their Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score (PASI100, PASI90 and PASI75) at 10, 12 or 16 weeks after starting biologic treatment, using contrast-based network meta-analysis methods and risk difference (RD). Probabilities of rank and surface under the cumulative ranking (SUCRA) were also estimated.
Data were pooled from 41 trials in 19,248 patients. All biologics were significantly more effective than placebo for PASI100, PASI90 and PASI75. The RD for PASI100 for brodalumab vs ixekizumab was 0.05 (95 % Confidence intervals [CI] -0.02, 0.11), brodalumab vs risankizumab was 0.04 (95 %CI -0.03, 0.11), and risankizumab vs ixekizumab was -0.01 (95 %CI -0.08, 0.06). The SUCRA for PASI100 and PASI90 achievement was 96.8 % and 86.8 %, respectively, for brodalumab, 82.6 % and 90.3 %, respectively for risankizumab, and 78.3 %, 80.9 %, respectively, for ixekizumab.
Of the biologics assessed, brodalumab, ixekizumab and risankizumab were the greatest rates of PASI90 and PASI100 achievement, and a higher probability of being most effective in the induction phase, compared with the other biologics.