Real‐world efficacy and safety of dupilumab in Chinese patients with atopic dermatitis: a single‐centre, prospective, open‐label study

BACKGROUND: Dupilumab, an antibody against interleukin-4 receptor α, has demonstrated elegant efficacy and safety profiles in patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (AD). However, the efficacy of dupilumab varies among AD patients, and compared with the Caucasian population, the data of dupilumab for Asian people, especially Chinese AD patients, is very limited. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the efficacy and safety of dupilumab for AD in a real-world Chinese single-centre prospective cohort. METHODS: We enrolled 138 moderate-to-severe AD patients receiving dupilumab treatment at Huashan Hospital, Shanghai, China in this 16-week, single-centre, prospective, open-label study. The patients were evaluated at baseline, 2, 4, 8 and 16 weeks after first dupilumab administration for multiple physician- and patient-reported outcome measures. Blood eosinophil counts and total serum IgE were measured. RESULTS: There were early and sustained improvement in all the efficacy measures evaluated after dupilumab administration. 64.5% AD patients achieved an improvement of ≥75% in the Eczema Area and Severity Index from baseline, and 60.9% patients achieved the Investigator's Global Assessment 0/1 (or a reduction of ≥2 points from baseline) at week 16. The trunk demonstrated the most significantly decreased efficacy score [median decreased 96.24% (interquartile range, 89.04 to 100%)] compared with other body sites. Female (adjusted OR: 2.12, 95% confidence interval: 0.79-5.74) and body mass index (BMI) <24 (3.03; 1.19-7.68) were identified as potential predictive factors of good response; while age >60 (0.57; 0.10-3.28) predicted poor response. Adverse events were reported by 34.1% patients, and facial erythema (13%) and ocular symptoms (10.9%) were the most common. CONCLUSIONS: Dupilumab demonstrated favourable efficacy and well-tolerated safety in Chinese AD patients in real-world practice.