(Reuters) – Bristol Myers Squib said on Tuesday its experimental oral drug for plaque psoriasis significantly reduced the extent and severity of the skin condition and was more effective than a placebo and Amgen Inc’s Otezla.
The drug, deucravacitinib, met the main goals in a late-stage study, with more patients given a 6mg dose once a day achieving a 75% improvement in psoriasis compared with a placebo, as measured by a scale called the Psoriasis Area Severity Index, after 16 weeks of treatment.
The company said the study also met a secondary goal of being more effective than Otezla in a proportion of patients showing improvement at week 16.
The results are from the second of two global late-stage studies comparing the drug to a placebo and Otezla. Positive results from the first of the two trials were reported in November 2020.
The company said it plans to share detailed trial results at a future medical meeting.
Psoriasis is a chronic, autoimmune inflammatory disorder that results in sometimes painful, scaly and inflamed skin patches, and is the most prevalent autoimmune disease in the United States, according to the National Institutes of Health.
(Reporting by Vishwadha Chander in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna Chandra Eluri)
