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Why Outcome Measures in Dermatology Are Becoming Patient Centric

  • Epidemiology (R Dellavalle, Section Editor)
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose of Review

Many “validated” treatment outcome assessments in clinical trials fail to include outcomes important to patients. This review will focus on recent efforts to revise and make patient-centric clinical trial outcomes used in psoriasis, acne vulgaris, atopic dermatitis, and hidradenitis suppurativa.

Recent Findings

Over recent years, international coalitions have been formed to revise the investigator-oriented “validated” measures (e.g., PASI, IGA) in order to incorporate outcomes important to patients These not only include quality of life (QoL) assessments but also the anatomic location, physical discomfort, and appearance. This review discusses work underway to include patients in formatting revised outcome assessments.

Summary

Historically, outcome measures have been developed by clinicians and pharmaceutical companies for use in clinical trials. Nonetheless, a movement is underway supported by regulatory agencies, government officials, and patient advocacy groups to include patients in the process of redesigning clinical trial outcome measures.

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References

Papers of particular interest, published recently, have been highlighted as: • Of importance

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Correspondence to James A Solomon.

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Conflict of Interest

Jennifer Nergard-Martin, Fariha Siddiqui, Ajay Kailas and Monet Winslow declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Dr. Solomon reports being an active participant in IDEOM, ADEN, and ACORN.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Epidemiology

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Nergard-Martin, J., Siddiqui, F., Kailas, A. et al. Why Outcome Measures in Dermatology Are Becoming Patient Centric. Curr Derm Rep 6, 178–185 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13671-017-0187-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13671-017-0187-4

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