LAUSR

Psoriasis is a chronic autoinflammatory disease which significantly impacts the quality of life of patients. Recently, the therapeutic realm of psoriasis has greatly expanded, with agents offering complete clearance of lesions in up to 37% of patients. With the advent of such successful agents, new treatment guidelines have incorporated biologics as monotherapy for moderate-to-severe psoriasis. Given these changes in the treatment guidelines, do placebo-controlled clinic trials continue to meet the ethical standards of clinical equipoise? Clinical equipoise is the belief that within placebo-controlled trials, those within the placebo arm do not receive substandard care. Within this article, we explore the concept of clinical equipoise and apply it to the placebo-controlled design of clinical trials in psoriasis.