Jonathan I. Silverberg, MD, PhD: Eligibility for Systemic Atopic Dermatitis Treatments

Jonathan I. Silverberg, MD, PhD, spoke about eligibility for systemic treatment for atopic dermatitis (AD) patients at the Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) 2023 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC.

Silverberg is known for his work as an Associate Professor of Dermatology at the Yale School of Medicine and Health Sciences in DC.

“It's a very important issue, you know, we're getting new options now,” he explained. “We have a growing toolbox of systemic and biologic therapies available. Let’s see, 1, 2, 3, 4 approved systemic or biologic options in the US. And 2 additional ones outside the US and another one coming by the end of this year, another one next year.”

Yet, explained, research has shown that, at best, around 7 to 8% of patients who could be eligible for systemic therapies are actually getting on systemic therapies.

“So what that tells us is that we're really missing these patients, and we're not doing as good of a job as we may tell ourselves,” he stated. “We are, you know, as dermatologists… we really are missing these patients.”

He noted that his session was about how to better identify such patients and to know the right questions to ask when it came to these patients.

“There are a number of important issues to think about,” Silverberg explained. “One is making sure that you really know how to properly assess atopic dermatitis across diverse patient populations, particularly in darker skin tones, (and) making sure you're not missing the erythema.”

He added that it is important not to under-appreciate the severity of the disease that an AD patient may be presenting with.

“Another very big issue is you've got to ask patients, you've got to talk to them, you can't just get out of the room in under 3 minutes,” he said. “Even if you're running behind in a clinic, you've got to take that time to be able to understand how the symptoms are affecting them, the itch, the skin pain, the sleep disturbances, whatever.”

For further information on this presentation, view the full interview segment above.