Efficacy of low-dose acitretin in the treatment of psoriasis.

Objectives: Clinical experience favors low doses of acitretin to reduce adverse events but still maintain efficacy. We revisited the pivotal acitretin trials to compare the efficacy of high- versus low-dose acitretin.

Materials And Methods: We analyzed data from two large randomized trials which had an 8-week, double-blinded (DB), placebo-controlled phase followed by a 16-week open-label (OL) phase.

Low-dose acitretin is associated with fewer adverse events than high-dose acitretin in the treatment of psoriasis.

Objective: In practice, lower dose acitretin therapy (25 mg/d) seems to be better tolerated and associated with fewer abnormalities found after laboratory testing. Here we revisit the original phase 3 trials for acitretin to evaluate the evidence for low-dose therapy producing fewer adverse effects than the 50 mg/d dosage.

Design: We retrospectively analyzed pooled data from 2 large pivotal trials, each including a randomized, placebo-controlled, 8-week double-blind phase followed by a 16-week open-label phase.