ORIGINAL ARTICLE   Free access

Giornale Italiano di Dermatologia e Venereologia 2020 April;155(2):150-4

DOI: 10.23736/S0392-0488.17.05754-6

Copyright © 2017 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Biologic agents perception in patients attending for the first-time to psoriasis centers: a multicenter Italian survey

Maria LUCA ¹, Maria L. MUSUMECI ¹, Federico BARDAZZI ², Concetta POTENZA ³, Nicoletta BERNARDINI ³, Francesca FERRARA ², Alessandra PAVONE ¹, Giuseppe MICALI ¹ ✉

¹ Department of Dermatology, G. Rodolico Hospital, Policlinico-Vittorio Emanuele University Hospital, University of Catania, Catania, Italy; ² Division of Dermatology, Department of Specialized, Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy; ³ Daniele Innocenzi Unit of Dermatology, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies, Polo Pontino, A. Fiorini Hospital, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

BACKGROUND: Inadequate treatment and delayed access to care represent critical issues regarding psoriasis. In Italy, patients treated with biologics are scanty and patients’ misinformation could interfere with both biologics prescription and access to care. Literature provide data on disease awareness and perception about biologics in already-treated patients, but there is a lack of information concerning patients never treated with such drugs.
METHODS: We conducted a national survey including three academic-based psoriasis care centers at Bologna, Rome and Catania. A questionnaire named Psoriatic Patients’s Awareness on Biologics (PPAB) was administered to patients naïve for biologics and accessing for the fist-time to a psoriasis care center.
RESULTS: Patients from Northern Italy referred to more reliable sources of information and awareness on biologics decreased from North to South. The increase of the Psoriasis Area Severity Index was associated to unawareness about biologics and impaired self-evaluation on the eligibility to treatment. Patients under systemic conventional /multiple therapy were more likely to be unaware about biologics.
CONCLUSIONS: Our survey demonstrates that psoriatic patients’ awareness is still an unmet need. For more, patients potentially eligible for biologics (severe or treated with systemic conventional/multiple therapy) were less informed. We believe that patients’ misinformation could have delayed the access to a psoriasis care center, so that when patients sought help their condition was more severe and required systemic conventional/multiple therapy. Our results reiterate the importance of physicians in the information process and urge the need of a common network among office dermatologists, general practitioners and psoriasis care centers.

KEY WORDS: Psoriasis; Communication; Awareness