Efficacy and Safety of Dupilumab in Clinical Practice: One Year of Experience on 165 Adult Patients from a Tertiary Referral Centre

Abstract

We have read with great interest the article by Kreeshan et al., which reported data on effectiveness and laboratory safety of dupilumab. We performed a retrospective study including 165 adult patients affected by moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (AD) and treated with dupilumab for at least 52 weeks. A significant improvement in eczema area severity index (EASI) score after 16 and 52 weeks of treatment with dupilumab was observed. The mean EASI score at baseline was 28.84 ± 6.4 and significantly reduced to 10.05 ± 8.00 at 16 weeks (p < 0.001), and to 3.04 ± 4.73 at 52 weeks (p < 0.001), with a mean percentage reduction of 65.15% and 89.45%, respectively. Efficacy of dupilumab was demonstrated by a significant reduction of all the scores (P-NRS, S-NRS and DLQI). Furthermore, no patient discontinued the drug because of inefficacy. Fifty-seven out of 165 (34.54%) patients reported at least one adverse event (AE) during the 52-week treatment. Our study confirms that dupilumab can represent a long-term treatment for moderate-to-severe adult AD, beyond 16 weeks. In our experience, dupilumab demonstrated a favourable safety profile at 52 weeks and only a few patients had to discontinue the treatment because of AEs.