Halobetasol Propionate and Tazarotene Lotion Maintains Skin Clearance of Psoriasis

Lotion with 0.01% halobetasol propionate and 0.045% tazarotene (HP/TAZ) was found to be effective and maintain skin clearance through week 52 in  patients with psoriasis who had experience using topical medications, according to results of a study presented at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD), held from March 25 to 29, 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts.

This study was a post-hoc analysis of data from the open-label study NCT02462083, which was designed to evaluate once daily HP/TAZ lotion for the treatment of psoriasis. For this study, the subset of patients (n=188) who were experienced users of topical antipsoriatic therapies at baseline were evaluated for safety and efficacy.

At trial, patients (N=550) used HP/TAZ for 8 weeks; responders stopped treatment and were reevaluated monthly up to week 52. The patients who did not achieve a response by week 8 continued to use HP/TAZ through week 24 and were evaluated monthly through week 52 thereafter. Any patient who had a flare resumed HP/TAZ treatment. Response was defined as Investigator’s Global Assessment (IGA) score 0/1 and flare as IGA score 2 or greater.

At baseline, 24.9% of participants were using topical corticosteroids and 9.3% other topical antipsoriatic medications.

Stratified by baseline treatment, patients who were using topical corticosteroids and other topical treatments had similar treatment success between weeks 8 and 52 (range, 20.0%-40.0% vs 21.1%-53.8%).

Those who used topical corticosteroids had an improvement in the mean body surface area affected from 5.7% at baseline to 3.8% at week 52. Similarly, those who used other topical treatments improved from 5.5% to 2.4%.

The percentage of patients who maintained disease control after discontinuing HP/TAZ did not differ significantly on the basis of baseline topical antipsoriatic use.

The rate of adverse events did not differ between cohorts.

These data indicated to the researchers that up to half of patients who had a history of using topical antipsoriatic therapies responded well to HP/TAZ and maintained clearance up to week 52.

Disclosure: An author declared affiliations with industry. Please refer to the original article for a full list of disclosures.

Reference

Gold LS, Alonso-Llamazares J, Zeichner J, Lewitt MG, Jacobson A. Maintenance of skin clearance in a long-term open-label study of fixed-combination halobetasol propionate and tazarotene lotion for psoriasis in participants with prior use of topical treatments. Presented at: the 2022 AAD Annual Meeting; March 25-29, 2022. Abstract/Poster 12161.