Psoriasis and clinical trials

Clinical trials are an important step in the discovery of effective new drugs and treatments. They help researchers better understand how to treat and prevent diseases and conditions, including psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis.

If psoriasis symptoms keep coming back after all available and approved therapies have been tried, a clinical trial might be an option for you or someone you care about.

There are many new, effective treatments available to control mild psoriasis. Clinical trials for psoriasis generally involve people with moderate to severe forms of the condition, which can be more challenging to treat.

Reasons why you might consider a clinical trial for psoriasis include:

1. Your current treatment doesn't control your psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis symptoms and no other approved therapies are likely to help.
2. All current or approved psoriasis treatments have potential side effects that are risky to your health.
3. Your current treatment causes serious side effects, or the side effects will cause long-term damage to your overall health.
4. You can't access standard or approved therapies because of location, cost or other factors.

There are several phases of clinical trials.

Phase 1 trials are small research studies that rely on healthy volunteers to evaluate how the body reacts to a new treatment.

If you're thinking about an experimental treatment for your psoriasis, you might ask your health care provider about phase 2 or phase 3 trials. These trials need hundreds to thousands of people with a condition or disease, such as psoriasis. They study how a treatment works — and if it's safe — compared with a currently approved treatment.

Phase 4 trials, also called post-phase trials, look at treatments after they've been approved and are on the market. These observational studies require thousands of participants. They monitor the long-term safety of a treatment and study how it affects the body over time.

You and your health care provider likely will discuss the pros and cons of any medicines or surgeries you need. Do the same thing when considering a clinical trial.

Benefits of a clinical trial:

• You get access to a treatment before it's approved or widely available.
• All medical care relating to the treatment, including lab work, is free.
• You may get paid for participating or for traveling to the trial site.
• You play an active part in your medical care while contributing to medical research.

Some drawbacks:

• You might not meet the requirements of the study you wish to be involved in.
• You may have to stop all current treatments before the trial begins.
• You might get a dummy pill, also called a placebo. Some clinical trials are randomized, which means half the participants receive the treatment and half don't. If it's a blind trial, your researcher or health care provider won't know which treatment you receive. But you will be informed if one of the treatments is a placebo before you give consent to participate.
• As with any medicine, you may have side effects. Or the drug may not work and your symptoms might get worse.
• Frequent checkups might be time-consuming for you.
• You might have trouble getting the treatment after the trial if the medicine isn't on the market yet.

Many clinical trials are currently underway for all types of psoriasis. Your health care provider may be able to give you information about psoriasis clinical trials near you.

You also can search for psoriasis clinical trials online, such as at the National Psoriasis Foundation's Clinical Trial Finder or at Mayo Clinic's Clinical Trials. Some search tools allow you to find a trial best suited to your needs, including how far you're willing to travel.

And remember, clinical trials need healthy volunteers too. Such studies aren't possible without all types of volunteers.