Choice of Systemic Drugs for the Management of Moderate-to-severe Psoriasis: A Cross-country Comparison Based on National Health Insurance Data

Current management of moderate-to-severe psoriasis may be heterogeneous between European countries, probably due to differences in the organization of care. The aim of this study was to compare the utilization of systemic treatments for psoriasis between 2 countries. All adults with psoriasis who were registered in the French (SNDS) and the Dutch (VEKTIS) national health insurance databases between 2012 and 2016 were eligible for inclusion. In France, 105,035 (15%) of 684,156 patients and, in the Netherlands, 37,405 (28.6%) of 130,822 patients received at least a systemic agent. In France, the proportion of patients treated with systemic agents was constant, while the type of drugs dispensed shifted from non-biological to biological agents. In the Netherlands, the first systemic treatment was methotrexate and, in France, acitretin. In France, the choice of the first biologic was much more variable than it was in the Netherlands, where a large proportion of patients were dispensed ustekinumab. This study highlights discrepancies between France and the Netherlands concerning the choice of first non-biologic agent and first biologic agent for patients with psoriasis. These discrepancies may be due to differences in the healthcare systems between the 2 countries.