A key issue in long-term therapy is the desire of many psoriasis patients to see how they will fare without medication, and the issue has been studied extensively in clinical trials. Dr. Gordon tells patients who would like to discontinue therapy until they relapse, and that there is a one in three chance that they won’t improve upon retreatment. These patients would then need to try another medication. Today there are other medications, and there will likely be more in the coming years, he said.
"But there is a group of patients – and I think we all have them – who are just burning through these medications and don’t respond as well as they did before. So I think we have to be careful and try to convince patients they might be better off staying on their medicine," he said.
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Dr. Gordon reported receiving research support and/or serving as a consultant to several pharmaceutical companies including Abbott, Amgen, Lilly, and Pfizer.