Adalimumab: efficacy and safety in psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.

The next generation of targeted biologic therapies for psoriasis will either be directed against new protein targets or improve on the efficacy, safety, or convenience of medications available for an already validated area in the immune response. Adalimumab is a fully human monoclonal antibody directed against tumor necrosis factor-alpha, a central cytokine in the immune response in psoriasis that has already been shown to be an effective target for therapy. This medication is approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Early phrase II studies with adalimumab have shown excellent efficacy for psoriasis with either weekly or every other week subcutaneous injection. Moreover, the safety and tolerability of adalimumab in large clinical studies of rheumatoid arthritis have shown good results. Thus, adalimumab shows significant promise for the therapy of psoriasis in the future. Copyright 2004 Blackwell Publishing, Inc.