Interventions Fail to Inspire Confidence in Psoriasis Biosimilars

A half dozen psychological interventions failed to significantly boost biosimilar hesitancy in patients with psoriasis, according to study findings published in Dermatology and Therapy.

“Improving confidence in biosimilar drugs is an important step toward expanding access to effective psoriasis medications,” wrote lead and corresponding author Matthew L. Hrin, MD, of Wake Forest School of Medicine, and coauthors. “However, it does not appear biosimilar confidence is much improved by the psychologic interventions assessed in the present study nor by our previous study, which involved positively framing them as the ‘gold’ alternative to bio-originators.”

The study included 1285 people with self-reported psoriasis, who were randomly assigned to one of 10 groups. The first group started with a hypothetical bio-originator; and the second, a hypothetical biosimilar.

The rest of the groups were told a hypothetical scenario in which they were switching to a biosimilar after achieving great results with a bio-originator. One group received no reassurance, while the remaining groups received one of several psychologic interventions, which spanned from reassurance of comparable effectiveness to anecdotes of great results to education of the process necessary to gain Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.

The study found that none of the interventions made a statistically significant difference in biosimilar confidence. However, the following techniques slightly improved biosimilar confidence compared with the biosimilar switch control group (mean 3.96):

• presenting an illustration depicting biosimilar and biologic comparability (mean 4.19);
• explaining the rigorous evaluation that biosimilars undergo to gain FDA approval (mean 4.21);
• testimonials of treatment success in “another psoriasis patient a lot like you” (mean 4.07) and “other psoriasis patients” (mean 4.01); and
• engagement in a task designed to facilitate recognition of biosimilar comparability through answering multiple choice (mean 4.02) and free response questions (mean 4.08).

“Reiterating the rigorous evaluation process that biosimilars undergo to gain FDA approval and/or providing patients with illustrations depicting biosimilars’ comparability to bio-originators appear to produce small improvements in biosimilar confidence and may be interventions to focus on for future development,” wrote researchers.

“While identifying highly effective simple strategies for improving perceptions of biosimilar drugs remains a challenge, negative findings can help influence the design of future experiments, reduce duplications of effort, and prevent randomly positive results from falsely appearing promising.”

Reference:
Hrin ML, Bray JK, Feldman SR. Reassurance techniques do not significantly impact confidence in biosimilars for psoriasis: a survey of a convenience sample of individuals with self-identified psoriasis. Dermatol Ther. Published online July 28, 2022. doi:10.1007/s13555-022-00781-3