Compliance, safety concerns and anxiety in patients treated with biologics for psoriasis during the COVID-19 pandemic national lockdown: a multicenter study in the Czech Republic
Abstract
Patient concerns about the possible increased susceptibility to coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) infection or a more severe course of the disease when treated with immunosuppressive therapy may lead to lower treatment compliance. Treatment safety concerns were significantly more commonin the biologics-treated patients, where 40.7% either agreed/strongly agreed of having experienced an increased risk of COVID-19 infection as compared to 21.3% in the conventional systemic group (P<0.01) and 10.9% in the topical therapy group (P<0.00001).
This study has limitations. Patient anxiety is affected by the severity of psoriasis, but in our study, patients on biologics hadrecently a milder case of the disease than patients in the other groups.
It is also possible that the relationship between psoriasis treatment and anxiety could be indirect (e.g. due to unmeasured confounding) and not a direct consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic.In conclusion, the overall compliance of biologic treatment of patients with psoriasis during the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down was extremely good despite expressing anxiety and more frequent concerns about the safety of their treatment compared to patients on other therapies.