Plaque psoriasis plagues Marietta man for over 30 years until new treatment

MARIETTA, Ga. - Greg Morrison of Marietta has been living with plaque psoriasis for more than 30 years.

"The rash, it itches constantly," Morrison says. "It flakes. It kind of pinches you, and then your skin feels too tight. It's not, like, super intense pain, but it's just irritating. It's hard to sleep."

Dr. Jamie Weisman of Medical Dermatology Specialists is Morrison's dermatologist.

"He's a person who had a really high amount of psoriasis," Weisman says. "Almost half of his body was covered, and it was thick, and it was angry, and you can't hide it."

Dr. Weisman says plaque psoriasis is an autoinflammatory skin disease that tends to hit people in adulthood, but can affect just about anyone.

What is psoriasis?

"So, classically, psoriasis has these red scaly plaques, and they're really well-defined," she says.  "You can see where they begin and end. It likes the scalp. It likes the elbows, it likes the knees."

About 30% of people also develop psoriatic arthritis.

"And it doesn't have to correlate with the severity of the rash," Dr. Weisman says. "You can have very mild skin disease and really crippling psoriatic arthritis, and you can be covered head to toe with psoriasis and have no joint pain at all."  

Morrison had both the skin rash and joint pain.

"We would find prescriptions that were great for my skin or great for my arthritis, but we couldn't find one that was doing really good things for both," he says.

Plaque psoriasis treatment shows promise

But about four months ago, he had a breakthrough. Morrison started receiving injections of a newly FDA-approved monoclonal antibody, Bimzelx, which Weisman helped study in clinical trials.

It is designed to block two naturally occurring proteins in the body thought to trigger the inflammation and swelling driving psoriasis.

"So, targeting both interleukin 17A and interleukin 17F really saturates that pathway both in the bloodstream and in the skin," Weisman explains.

The safety and efficacy of Bimzelx were evaluated in two clinical trials involving 839 adult patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis.

The manufacturer, UCB, says in combined clinical studies, nearly 90% of people saw 90% clearer skin 16 weeks into treatment.

And, Weisman says, the treatment works quickly, sometimes after the first injection.

"For patients, it's so reassuring when they see the response to know that they've chosen correctly, chosen the right medicine: 'Right, This is working. My psoriasis is going away after just that first injection,'" she says.

Greg Morrison says this is the first treatment that seems to be helping both his skin and his joint pain.

This is the first time since I developed the arthritis that I've been good with both," he says. "So, she was kind of like, 'This drug may be actually made just for you!"

Bimzelx impacts the immune system and can reduce the body's ability to fight off infection.

Side effects of the treatment can include upper respiratory tract infections, headache, herpes simplex infections (cold sores in or around the mouth), small red bumps on the skin feeling tired, fungal infections (oral thrush or infections in the mouth, throat, skin, nails, feet, or genitals), pain, redness, or swelling at the injection site, stomach flu (gastroenteritis), and acne, according to the Food and Drug Administration

The agency says Bimzelx has also been associated with suicidal thoughts and behavior, infections, liver laboratory abnormalities, and inflammatory bowel disease.

The FDA notes patients on Bimzelx should not receive live vaccines.