Jeff Stark, MD, vice president and head of immunology, UCB, discusses findings on improved pain management in patients with moderate to severe hidradenitis suppurativa (HS).
Treatment with bimekizumab-bkzx led to continued long-term improvements in pain and reductions in draining tunnel counts over 48 weeks, says Jeff Stark, MD, vice president, head of medical immunology, UCB.
Transcript
How do improvements in skin pain correlate with the overall quality of life for patients living with moderate to severe hidradenitis suppurativa (HS)?
As you discuss symptoms with HS patients, what impacts them the most, what interferes with their quality of life the most, there are a few things that are almost universally mentioned by patients with HS. One of those is certainly pain. Pain is linked primarily to the acute inflammation of the disease, and really is one of the things that HS patients experience most prominently, that interferes with their ability to have a high quality of life, that interferes with their work productivity, etc. And so, to be able to address that component of disease that's driven by the acute inflammation is very important. It certainly is not the only impactful symptom that patients with HS experience. There are others related to tissue damage from that inflammation, that includes things like draining tunnels, for example. But acute pain is a significant factor for most patients living with HS and one that we hope to address and improve by treating the inflammation associated with the disease.
Can you provide an overview on the sustained reductions in draining tunnel count observed in patients treated with bimekizumab-bkzx compared with placebo over the 48-week period?
Draining tunnels in HS are another symptom that is very impactful to patients with the disease and is a significant impedance to their high quality of life. If we think about pain as being a manifestation of acute inflammation, draining tunnels are one of those manifestations that are a longer-term consequence of untreated inflammation. And if you think about what patients with draining tunnels may experience; these patients may experience sudden drainage that occurs without warning, it can happen in the middle of their workday, it can happen as they're going about their regular social activities and can be a major source of embarrassment for them. It's a reason why they have to use dressings to control that drainage. Many of these patients even report a foul odor associated with that drainage, and you can appreciate how impactful that is on their daily routine and their social interaction.
This is something that we really want to see improving. We're very happy to see those improvements in bimekizumab-treated patients in our clinical trial program. We actually see several important thresholds of improvement in our data that we presented here at AAD [American Academy of Dermatology]. We see, for example, that by week 48, 50% of bimekizumab-treated patients had no draining tunnels, which is very exciting to see for those patients. But we also see that patients with a higher burden of draining tunnels at baseline—so those who had 5 or more a significant proportion of those patients—80% experienced a reduction in the number of 3 or more draining tunnels. So even those patients with a higher burden of draining tunnels at baseline, high numbers of them had a significant reduction in those number of draining tunnels. Again, [that’s] something that's very important for these patients and their quality of life, and which we're very happy to see in the bimekizumab clinical program for HS.
Could On-Body Delivery of Isatuximab Bring More Competition to Anti-CD38 Myeloma Treatment?
June 6th 2025Results for IRAKLIA show noninferiority for Sanofi's on-body delivery system for isatuximab, compared with IV administration. Patients overwhelmingly preferred the hands-free delivery option.
Read More
Laundromats as a New Frontier in Community Health, Medicaid Outreach
May 29th 2025Lindsey Leininger, PhD, and Allister Chang, MPA, highlight the potential of laundromats as accessible, community-based settings to support Medicaid outreach, foster trust, and connect families with essential health and social services.
Listen
ICS Use Tied to Fewer Exacerbations in Patients With Bronchiectasis and Elevated Blood Eosinophils
June 6th 2025Inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) use was common among patients with bronchiectasis and was associated with reduced exacerbations and hospitalizations in those with elevated blood eosinophil counts.
Read More
Real-World Data Support Luspatercept vs ESAs for Anemia in Lower-Risk MDS
June 5th 2025Patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) who received luspatercept showed greater hemoglobin gains and transfusion independence compared with erythropoiesis-stimulating agents (ESAs) in a real-world analysis.
Read More
At EHA 2025, Hematology Discussions Will Stretch Across Lifespans and Locations
June 5th 2025The 2025 European Hematology Association (EHA) Congress, convening virtually and in Milan, Italy, from June 12 to June 15, 2025, will feature a revamped program structure for the meeting’s 30th anniversary while maintaining ample opportunities to network, debate, and absorb practice-changing findings in hematology and oncology.
Read More