Duration of remission of psoriasis therapies.

The armamentarium of therapies for psoriasis continues to expand with drugs such as tazarotene, calcipotriene, and acitretin approved in recent years. New forms of old treatments such as cyclosporine and anthralin have also been introduced. Frequently, inadequate attention is devoted to duration of remission. The purpose of this article is to examine the duration of remission reported with many therapies currently used for psoriasis. Studies examining duration of remission are included. Among our conclusions were the following: the definitions of remission/relapse used in various studies differ, duration of remission is influenced by the natural history of each patient's disease, among topical monotherapies anthralin and tazarotene appear to induce longer remissions than calcipotriene and corticosteroids, among systemic agents longer remissions occur with etretinate than cyclosporine or methotrexate but compared with the remission rate of phototherapeutic modalities, especially Goeckerman and PUVA therapy, the remission rates are much less.