Adverse drug events observed with 150 mg versus 300 mg secukinumab for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis: A systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Secukinumab has been approved for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. However, safety measures concerning drug administration is vital during treatment. Understanding the right way to administer drugs is important to reduce any serious adverse drug event. In this analysis we aimed to systematically show the risk of adverse drug events which were observed with 150 mg versus (vs) 300 mg secukinumab for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. METHODS: The major online databases: Cochrane Central, MEDLINE, www.ClinicalTrials.com and EMBASE were searched for relevant publications based on the comparison of secukinumab 150 mg vs 300 mg for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Adverse drug events were considered as the clinical endpoints. Statistical analysis was carried out by the RevMan 5.3 software. Risk ratios (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were generated to represent the data following statistical analysis. RESULTS: Seven studies with a total number of 2361 participants were included. Results of this analysis showed that the risk of any adverse event (RR: 1.00, 95% CI: 0.96–1.05; P = .94), the risk of serious adverse events (RR: 1.04, 95% CI: 0.75–1.43; P = .82) and the risk of adverse events leading to drug discontinuation (RR: 0.98, 95% CI: 0.61–1.57; P = .92) were not significantly different between 150 mg vs 300 mg secukinumab for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. When the detailed adverse drug events were studied, the risks of infection or infestation (RR: 1.11, 95% CI: 0.98–1.25; P = .09), naso-pharyngitis (RR: 1.05, 95% CI: 0.90–1.23; P = .55), headache (RR: 0.92, 95% CI: 0.68–1.25; P = .60), diarrhea (RR: 1.14, 95% CI: 0.75–1.73; P = .55), pruritus (RR: 0.82, 95% CI: 0.56–1.22; P = .33), arthralgia (RR: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.67–1.38; P = .83), upper respiratory tract infection (RR: 0.98, 95% CI: 0.70–1.36; P = .89), hypertension (RR: 1.22, 95% CI: 0.83–1.81; P = .31), nausea (RR: 1.39, 95% CI: 0.63–3.04; P = .42), and cough (RR: 1.46, 95% CI: 0.67–3.19; P = .34) were still not significantly different between these 2 dosage regimens. CONCLUSION: Secukinumab 150 mg and 300 mg were both equally tolerable and might safely be used for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. No significant adverse drug events were observed with any of the dosage.