Weekend Ciclosporin Maintenance Therapy for Moderate Psoriasis.

Please cite this article as: Feltes F, Macías del Toro E, Ramírez Bellver JL, Bernardez Guerra C. Terapia de mantenimiento con ciclosporina en pauta de fin de semana para psoriasis moderada. Actas Dermosifiliogr. 2015;106:583--584. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (F. Feltes). The use of ciclosporin microemulsion in a weekend regimen has been proposed as an alternative for long-term treatment in a subgroup of patients. The aim of this article is to draw attention to this therapeutic modality. One of the most important studies was the Psoriasis Relapse Evaluation With Week-End Neoral Treatment (PREWENT), which compared a group of 162 patients treated with a weekend regimen of ciclosporin (5 mg/kg/d, 2 days a week) with 81 patients in a placebo group, after induction with ciclosporin in a continuous regimen administered for 8 to 16 weeks until a 75% improvement in the psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) was achieved. That prospective, double-blind multicenter study evaluated the recurrence rate at 24 weeks. Compared with placebo, the weekend regimen with ciclosporin produced a significant prolongation (P = 0.023) in the time to recurrence and an increase in the success rate (69.9% vs 46.3%; P = 0.011) in the psoriasis group with a PASI score of 12-19. In the patients with a PASI score < 12, maintenance therapy was not superior to placebo, as patients in this latter group remained disease free at 6 months after receiving only the continuous induction therapy; in patients with severe psoriasis it was concluded that the weekend regimen was insufficient. There was no increase in the creatinine levels or blood pressure of the treated patients. Similar results were obtained in the cohort studied by Fernandes et al., in which induction using a continuous ciclosporin regimen was followed by 20 weeks of therapy in a weekend regimen (10 patients) or a continuous regimen (9 patients). An improvement in the PASI of 75% versus 80%,