Biologic therapy is associated with reduced ocular disease in psoriasis: a real-world study

TL;DR

Biologic therapy for psoriasis is linked to lower risk of eye surface diseases like dry eye and conjunctivitis, according to a large real-world study.

Contribution

This study is the first to show that biologic treatments reduce ocular surface disease risk in psoriasis patients using real-world data.

Findings

Biologic therapy reduced dry eye disease risk by 45% compared to non-biologic treatments.

Conjunctivitis and keratitis risks were also significantly lower in biologic-treated patients.

Lower ocular disease risk was observed as early as 6 months and persisted for up to 10 years.

Abstract

Psoriasis is a systemic immune-mediated disease with ocular involvement. While biologic therapies reduce cardiovascular and musculoskeletal comorbidities, their impact on ocular health is not well characterised. We aimed to assess whether biologic therapy is associated with reduced ocular disease risk in psoriasis patients.

We performed a large-scale, retrospective cohort study using the TriNetX Global Collaborative Network (>160 million patients worldwide). Adults with psoriasis initiating biologic therapy were compared with those receiving non-biologic systemic treatments. Cohorts were matched 1:1 by propensity scoring for demographic and clinical variables. Sixty-eight ocular outcomes were assessed over 6 to 120 months. Hazard ratios (HRs) were estimated using proportional hazards models.

Among 30,911 biologic-treated and 35,832 non-biologic-treated patients with psoriasis, biologic therapy was consistently associated with reduced risk of ocular surface and corneal inflammation. The strongest associations were seen for dry eye disease (mean HR = 0.55, 95% confidence interval [CI; 0.42, 0.66], p = 0.0007), conjunctivitis (mean HR = 0.71, 95% CI [0.59, 0.86], p = 0.01), and keratitis (mean HR = 0.40, 95% CI [0.3, 0.56], p = 0.0007). These lower-risk associations were evident from 6 months and remained observable in the 10-year analysis window. No consistent reduction was observed for retinal or vitreous disease.

Biologic therapy in psoriasis was associated with a lower risk of ocular surface disease. These observational findings may inform interdisciplinary management and consideration of ocular outcomes in treatment decisions.

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