Apremilast survival and reasons for discontinuation in psoriasis: five-year experience from a Greek tertiary care centre

Citation: Sotiriou E, Tsentemeidou A, Sideris N, et al. Apremilast survival and reasons for discontinuation in psoriasis: five-year experience from a Greek tertiary care centre. Dermatol Pract Concept. 2022;12(2):e2022076. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5826/dpc.1202a76

Accepted: December 7, 2021; Published: April 2022

Copyright: ©2022 Sotiriou et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (BY-NC-4.0), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/, which permits unrestricted noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and source are credited.

Funding: None.

Competing interests: None.

IRB approval: Ethics committee of The Hospital of Venereal and Dermatologic Diseases of Thessaloniki, Greece.

Authorship: All authors have contributed significantly to this publication

Corresponding author: Aikaterini Tsentemeidou, MS. First Department of Dermatology and Venereology, School of Medicine, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki, Greece. Email: ktsenteme@gmail.com 

Abstract

Introduction: Drug survival is an indirect measure of efficacy and safety and its post-marketing assessment using real-life data is invaluable.

Objectives: To investigate the survival of apremilast in a cohort of psoriasis patients treated with apremilast in a Greek hospital.

Methods: A retrospective cross-sectional study examined adult psoriasis patients receiving apremilast (March 2016 to January 2021). Primary endpoint was the cumulative survival probability at 52 weeks. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to calculate survival probability. Cox regression analysis was performed to investigate potential risk factors for apremilast discontinuation.

Results: 102 patients (29.4% females) with a mean age of 55.94 years (Standard Deviation 15.21) were included. 65 patients (63.7%) had discontinued treatment by lock date: 19 (18.6%) due to lack of efficacy, 24 (23.5%) due to loss of efficacy, 15 (14.7%) due to adverse reactions, and 7 (6.86%) due to other reasons. Cumulative survival probability at 52 weeks was 52.1%. Median survival time for all reasons for discontinuation was 58 weeks 95%Confidence Interval (40.02, 75.98).

Conclusions: Approximately half of patients remained on apremilast after a year of treatment. Secondary drug failure was the most common reason for discontinuation.

Keywords : psoriasis, apremilast, survival, discontinuation, Greece

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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