AMSTERDAM – Oral curcumin proved safe and effective as adjunctive therapy in patients on topical corticosteroids for mild to moderate psoriasis vulgaris in a 12-week, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial.
This agent helps fill an unmet need in psoriasis, Dr. Emiliano Antiga observed in presenting the study findings at the annual congress of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.
Dr. Emiliano Antiga
That’s because by far most of the action in the development of new treatments for psoriasis focuses on biologics and other extremely costly agents targeting patients at the moderate to severe end of the disease spectrum. But psoriasis is a chronic condition, and the many patients with milder disease require long-term therapies that are nontoxic and won’t break the bank. Enter curcumin.
“Oral curcumin is effective, safe, and it is cheap,” declared Dr. Antiga, a dermatologist at the University of Florence (Italy).
Moreover, it has a biologically plausible mechanism of benefit in psoriasis, as was demonstrated in his 60-patient randomized trial. Serum levels of the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-22 were cut in half in the group assigned to 12 weeks of daily oral curcumin while remaining unchanged in the control group.
Curcumin is derived from turmeric, the dried rhizome of a plant, Curcuma longa. Turmeric is a yellowish Indian spice used in curries. But curcumin has long been used therapeutically in traditional Indian and Chinese medicine. Studies have shown that curcumin has antiproliferative, antiangiogenic, and anti-inflammatory effects. In a small study by other investigators, topical turmeric not only successfully cleared psoriasis lesions, it also suppressed phosphorylase kinase activity, which is important to keratinocyte proliferation (Br. J. Dermatol. 2000;143:937-49).
Dr. Antiga presented a study of 60 patients with mild to moderate psoriasis vulgaris as defined by a baseline median Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score of 5.5 who were randomly assigned to 12 weeks of treatment with topical corticosteroids plus 3 g per day of oral curcumin or topical steroids plus placebo. The active-treatment capsules contained curcumin embedded in nanoparticle liposomes to enhance bioavailability.
Forty-nine patients completed the study. The primary endpoint was reduction in PASI values over 12 weeks. Both groups showed improvement – after all, the controls were on active treatment with topical steroids – but the change in PASI scores was significantly greater in the curcumin-treated patients.
Adverse events in the curcumin group were limited to one case of diarrhea. There was one case of nausea and one papular eruption in the control group.
Although IL-22 levels at 12 weeks were halved in the curcumin group and unchanged in controls, levels of the inflammatory cytokines IL-10 and -17 and transforming growth factor–beta remained unchanged in both groups over time.
Dr. Antiga reported having no financial conflicts regarding this study.