Psocare Programme
In November 2004, AIFA (The Italian Drugs Agency) created a workgroup for psoriasis, whose purpose was to face homogeneously the topic of the pharmacological treatment of psoriasis and to establish a programme – named PSOCARE - to assess the validity of the given treatment.
The purpose of the project is to make sure there is a research in Italy that can assess the long-term clinical outcome of the different treatments for the many forms of psoriasis. This was the goal of AIFA’s PSOCARE project, made together with the Italian Scientific Dermatology Societies - SIDeMaST and ADOI – and with ADIPSO – the Italian Patients Association.
The goals of the programme can be summarised as follows:
- Evaluate treatment profiles and identify the factors behind a decision regarding the systemic treatment for psoriasis.
- Describe the long-term effects of a systemic treatment, its ‘survivability’ and safety profile and compare the outcome of different treatment strategies. Estimate in a realistic manner the benefits and risks of the different treatment options currently available.
- Study the prognosis factors regarding the response to the treatment and assess the impact of a given decision on those excluded from clinical studies, i.e. patients with multiple disorders, children, elderly people, pregnant women, etc. Identify specific groups of patients with a higher risk of receiving an inappropriate treatment or an unfavourable outcome.
- Evaluate the transferability/practicability of the outcome of the research and of the current guidelines and highlight the areas with a greater level of uncertainty/problems in order to have more interesting tips for future researches.
ADIPSO is involved in all the aforementioned activities. The Patients Association will act as a source of information and will collaborate to obtain a more integrated kind of assistance.
