Psoriasis and atopic dermatitis are chronic inflammatory disease that account for a significant amount of patients in most dermatological practices. Topical corticosteroid agents are often prescribed for treatment of both these conditions, especially when they are localized rather than wide spread. Prolonged treatment with corticosteroids occasionally results in resistance to treatment. The development of resistance to treatment is termed tachyphylaxis. Tachyphylaxis has been thought to be a result of down regulation of target receptors, resulting is a decreased metabolic effect of the compound.
Poor adherence, rather than down regulation of receptors, may be the primary cause of tachyphylaxis to topical corticosteroids. Patients' use of topical medications decrease over time. Topical spray vehicles have become increasingly more popular because of their rapid application and ease of use. Desoximetasone 0.25% spray is a well-tolerated, FDA approved, potent topical corticosteroid that rapidly and successfully treats inflammatory skin diseases.
Lots of treatment options exist for psoriasis; however, some patients do not get better using these medications. These patients are said to have resistant disease. In this study, we define resistant disease by failure of previous topical steroid treatment. Poor adherence is a barrier to positive clinical outcomes. Failure to respond to medication may be a result of poor adherence rather than resistance to the topical therapy. The purpose of this study is to delineate between the two.
The primary objective of the study is to determine, under conditions designed to assure good adherence, whether topical 0.25% desoximetasone spray improves clinical outcomes in patients who have resistant inflammatory skin disease defined by failure of previous topical steroid treatment.
We propose to enroll 12 subjects with psoriasis and 12 subjects with atopic dermatitis who have "failed" previous topical treatment. Subjects will be required to have body surface area involvement that can be reasonably treated with topical treatment. At the baseline visit, patients will be given Topicort spray and will be shown how to use it. Patients will apply the medication at the initial visit under supervision. Subjects with atopic dermatitis will be treated for 1 week; subjects with psoriasis will be treated for 2 weeks. Visits will take place at baseline, 3 days, 1 week, and in the case of psoriasis, 2 weeks. All subjects enrolled in the study will receive nominal compensation per visit.
To assure good adherence to treatment, patients will be called twice each day, morning and evening, at predetermined times to go over their use of the medication. Disease severity will be measured by EASI (atopic dermatitis)/PASI (psoriasis), Investigator Global Assessment (IGA), and Pruritus Visual Analog Scale (Pruritus VAS). Based on our previous experience, we expect rapid improvement in disease severity measures with good adherence to short term use of highly effective topical treatment. Mean and median changes in the efficacy measures will be reported. In the primary analyses, Wilcoxon signed rank tests will be used to analyze improvements in assessments at end of study compared to baseline.
