Successful treatment of cutaneous lesions of dermatomyositis with topical pimecrolimus

Unmet Medical Needs in Chronic, Non-communicable Inflammatory Skin Diseases

An estimated 20-25% of the population is affected by chronic, non-communicable inflammatory skin diseases. Chronic skin inflammation has many causes. Among the most frequent chronic inflammatory skin diseases are atopic dermatitis, psoriasis, urticaria, lichen planus, and hidradenitis suppurativa, driven by a complex interplay of genetics and environmental factors. Autoimmunity is another important cause of chronic skin inflammation. The autoimmune response may be mainly T cell driven, such as in alopecia areata or vitiligo, or B cell driven in chronic spontaneous urticaria, pemphigus and pemphigoid diseases. Rare causes of chronic skin inflammation are autoinflammatory diseases, or rheumatic diseases, such as cutaneous lupus erythematosus or dermatomyositis. Whilst we have seen a significant improvement in diagnosis and treatment, several challenges remain. Especially for rarer causes of chronic skin inflammation, early diagnosis is often missed because of low awareness and lack of diagnostics. Systemic immunosuppression is the treatment of choice for almost all of these diseases. Adverse events due to immunosuppression, insufficient therapeutic responses and relapses remain a challenge. For atopic dermatitis and psoriasis, a broad spectrum of innovative treatments has been developed. However, treatment responses cannot be predicted so far. Hence, development of (bio)markers allowing selection of specific medications for individual patients is needed. Given the encouraging developments during the past years, we envision that many of these challenges in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic inflammatory skin diseases will be thoroughly addressed in the future.

Dermatomyositis: An Update on Diagnosis and Treatment

Dermatomyositis is a rare inflammatory disease with characteristic cutaneous findings and varying amounts of systemic involvement. Patients may present with skin disease alone, have concomitant muscle disease, or have extracutaneous manifestations such as pulmonary disease or an associated malignancy. Given such diverse presentations, dermatomyositis is both a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. However, a prompt diagnosis is of utmost importance to institute adequate therapy and screen patients for an associated malignancy. Dermatologists should play a crucial role in the diagnosis and management of patients with dermatomyositis as cutaneous disease tends to be chronic, negatively impact quality of life, and be more recalcitrant to therapy. In this review, we discuss diagnosis, with a focus on myositis-specific antibodies and their associated phenotypes. We also review therapies available for this often refractory skin disease.

Pharmacological management of dermatomyositis

INTRODUCTION

Dermatomyositis is a rare heterogeneous systemic autoimmune disease with multiple organ involvement which can result in significant disability and mortality. Despite the lack of placebo-controlled trials, glucocorticoids are considered to be the mainstay of initial management. Treatment strategies are mainly based on uncontrolled studies, evidence based guidelines for treatments do not exist. Areas covered: This review provides an overview of the currently available pharmacological treatments in the field of dermatomyositis including conventional immunosuppressants, biologics and topical agents. The role of antibodies in different treatment responses of dermatomyositis related clinicoserological syndromes is also discussed. A PubMed search was performed in order to find relevant literature for this review. Expert commentary: Early recognition and intervention is essential to ameliorate disease outcome. Determination of antibodies provide a useful key in diagnosis, clinical manifestations, malignancy, prognosis, and treatment response and may lead to wider acceptance of personalized medicine. Corticosteroids with adjunctive steroid-sparing immunosuppressive therapies are recommended to treat disease activity, prevent mortality, and reduce long-term disability. Combinations of second-line therapies or newer third-line therapies are used in severe, refractory, or corticosteroid-dependent diseases. Further research is required to assess the role of new therapies.

[Dermatomyositis-update]

Dermatomyositis is a rare idiopathic inflammatory myopathy that affects adults and children, mostly female. Hallmarks of the disease are myositis with necrosis, regeneration and perifascicular atrophy accompanied by a typical skin rash with heliotrope erythema, Gottron's sign, Gottron's papules and nail fold changes with splinter hemorrhage. Typical skin symptoms may appear 6 months up to 2 years before muscle involvement (amyopathic dermatomyositis). New myositis-specific antibodies may allow clinicoserologic correlations within a heterogeneous clinical spectrum. Autoantibody profiles, subtype of myositis, overlap with other collagen vascular disorders and/or malignancy (paraneoplastic dermatomyositis) as well as age of the patients all have a considerable impact on course and prognosis. Infections, drugs and tumors may trigger activation of T and B cells, plasmacytoid dendritic cells, overproduction of type I interferons and complement-mediated endothelial cell damage resulting in vasculopathy. UV radiation may also trigger dermatomyositis. Oral corticosteroids (1.5-2.0 mg/kg body weight/day) are the mainstay of treatment until improvement of muscle symptoms and/or normalization of muscle enzymes with subsequent slow tapering. Corticosteroids may be given as monotherapy or combined with steroid-sparing immunosuppressive agents' i.e. azathioprine, methotrexate, mycophenolate mofetil or high-dose intravenous immunoglobulins. Prognosis has improved considerably since use of high-dose corticosteroids, from 50 to 90% response rate. New therapies with biologicals (anti-CD20-, anti-TNFalpha-, anti-interferon antibodies) and Janus kinase inhibitors are currently being evaluated.

Innate immune-response mechanisms in dermatomyositis: an update on pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment

Dermatomyositis (DM) is an autoimmune disease mainly affecting muscle and skin. Typical clinical and laboratory findings include muscle weakness with elevated muscle enzymes, characteristic skin lesions (e.g., Gottron papules, heliotrope erythema, Shawl sign), and specific serum autoantibodies. Recent studies have highlighted the activation of the innate immune system, including high expression of interferons (IFNs) and IFN-regulated proteins, as an important pathological hallmark of DM. These findings have changed our understanding of the disease fundamentally, since inappropriate activation of the innate immune system with secondary dysregulation of the adaptive immune response is now considered to be a central pathogenetic feature of DM. In this article, we review current guidelines and standards in diagnosis and treatment. We detail evidence-based and pathophysiology-based treatment strategies, with a focus on skin as well as on muscle lesions. Particularly, we discuss how the recent advances in the understanding of the pathomechanisms of DM have altered our conception of the mode of action of established drugs such as chloroquine and methotrexate. Finally, we outline possible future treatment strategies, with a focus on the innate immune system, e.g., targeting the IFN system with the anti-IFN-α antibody sifalimumab.

Cutaneous dermatomyositis: an updated review of treatment options and internal associations

Dermatomyositis is a specific type of inflammatory myopathy with characteristic cutaneous findings. Patients may have skin disease without clinically apparent muscle disease, but this disorder is best thought of as a systemic process. Therefore, all patients with dermatomyositis skin lesions need appropriate evaluation for muscle disease, esophageal dysfunction, cardiopulmonary disease, and potential internal malignancy. There are many therapies that have been used for patients with dermatomyositis, but most are based upon case series or expert opinion rather than meta-analyses or randomized, placebo-controlled trials. Even those therapies that have been subjected to randomized, blinded, placebo-controlled trials include a mixture of patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy and do not utilize a validated assessment tool for measuring cutaneous disease responses. In this review, we discuss the therapies available as well as the internal associations with dermatomyositis.