TREatment of ATopic eczema (TREAT) Registry Taskforce: method for comparing the safety of dupilumab with other systemic therapies for moderate‐to‐severe eczema

Summary Atopic eczema (also called ‘atopic dermatitis’ or just ‘eczema’) is a common skin disease. Most people with atopic eczema can control their eczema with topical therapies (applied directly to the skin) such as emollients and topical corticosteroids. Some people, however, have moderate‐to‐severe disease that cannot be well managed with those therapies. Systemic therapy (acting on the whole body), with tablets or injections, is needed in these people to improve their symptoms effectively. Dupilumab is a new systemic medication (since 2018) for treating people with moderate‐to‐severe eczema. It has been approved both in the U.S.A. and the E.U. for people who are 12 years or older. In order to compare the safety of dupilumab with other systemic therapies, researchers need data on the safety of all those medications in real practice. The registries of the TREAT Registry Taskforce collect data on both the effectiveness and safety of all systemic therapies for atopic eczema. Countries such as the U.K., Ireland, the U.S.A., Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Portugal are participating in TREAT. All those countries collect data the same way, so that the data are comparable. This article describes a protocol on how to use all these international data to compare the safety of dupilumab with other systemic treatments. This is important both for physicians and patients, to allow them to make informed decisions on which treatment is best for them. This is a summary of the study: TREatment of ATopic eczema (TREAT) Registry Taskforce: protocol for a European safety study of dupilumab and other systemic therapies in patients with atopic eczema Linked Article: Bosma et al. Br J Dermatol 2020; 182:1423–1429