Discussing Chronic Hand Eczema and Delgocitinib’s Potential Approval, with Jeff Yu, MD

In a new Q&A interview by the HCPLive editorial team, JiaDe (Jeff) Yu, MD, MS, spoke about the most notable takeaways from his talk at the 2025 Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis (RAD) Conference regarding chronic hand eczema, its impacts, and potential treatments in the pipeline.

Yu is known for his role as a board-certified dermatologist and fellowship-trained pediatric dermatologist specializing in allergic contact dermatitis and occupational dermatitis in adults and children at Massachusetts General Hospital. Yu spoke with in a Q&A interview about his talk and some of the specifics regarding chronic hand eczema.

HCPLive: Would you share some specifics highlighted in your session on chronic hand eczema?

Yu: I think chronic hand eczema is a slightly tangential but very much related area to atopic dermatitis. A lot of people think chronic hand eczema is just another form of atopic dermatitis. But the more we understand chronic hand eczema, we understand it to be a kind of mishmash of various types of different types of barrier-disruptive dermatoses, whether that's going to include irritant contact dermatitis, allergic contact dermatitis, atopic dermatitis, or other forms of dermatitis that can oftentimes present on the hand.

I think we tend to lump all of that together into what we call chronic hand eczema. The treatment for chronic hand eczema really depends on what we are trying to treat. If it's atopic dermatitis, I think a lot of the present atopic dermatitis therapies are very effective for it, especially the ones that are targeting particular pathways. However, if we're not treating atopic dermatitis in chronic hand eczema and a lot of chronic hand is not atopic dermatitis, we may actually be failing the patient. And that's where some of these newer therapies really come in handy.

So during my session today, I want to talk a lot about the burden of atopic dermatitis, about chronic hand eczema, why we care about it, what is the occupational impact of the condition, and how it affects patients. We think about it as hand eczema, but probably it's the most critical part of your body when you're trying to interact with the community, whether it is with work, whether it's with a loved one, whether it's with your child, hand eczema really affects all of us.

HCPLive: We would also like to ask you about delgocitinib cream, its potential upcoming approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and what clinicians need to know about it?

Yu: I think delgocitinib is a really exciting therapy that is about to hit the market either later this year or early next year. I do think that with this therapy, it is the first type of therapy we have in the United States that is going to be geared towards chronic hand eczema. Currently, there are no FDA-approved therapies for chronic hand eczema. We, as dermatologists, tend to treat it just like we do other types of examined dermatoses with topical steroids and some of the non-steroidal topicals that are currently available on the market, but none of them have really been shown to be as effective as delgocitinib has shown to be in the literature so far.

In one of the comparative trials that they've done between delgocitinib and alitretinoin, which is one of the very few approved therapies for eczema, though it's not available in the US and it's only available in Canada and Europe, it showed that it was comparable to this oral retinoid that has been the standard of treatment for severe and eczema. So I think this topical therapy is very safe, very effective, and stands to maybe change the way that we treat hand eczema here in the United States.

HCPLive: Outside of atopic dermatitis and chronic hand eczema, are there any other areas of dermatology in which you are looking forward to research?

Yu: Part of my time I spend clinically is working with patients who have allergic contact dermatitis. To date, there are absolutely no treatments available for allergic contact dermatitis other than avoidance of the allergen, which can be challenging for a lot of patients. Either we don't have a great way of identifying the allergen through patch testing, or we don't identify the allergen, or patients are not able to avoid the allergen, whether it's because of the type of work that they do or the type of things that they have to use on their day to day.

Sometimes, we just aren't able to really adequately control the dermatitis due to an allergen contact. So I am hoping to see if we can potentially partner up with some of our industry partners to potentially come up with a therapy to treat allergic contact dermatitis in patients who are otherwise not able to avoid it. I think that would make a huge amount of difference in about 20% of our patients' lives.

HCPLive: What is the value of a meeting like RAD 2025?

Yu: I think Revolutionizing Atopic Dermatitis is just such an amazing conference, because it brings together all the clinicians and experts and industry partners in here and internationally that really care about atopic dermatitis. We're all here for the same mission, which is to improve our patients' lives with atopic dermatitis.

We're here to talk about advances. We're here to talk about current management practices. We're here to teach people who may be less familiar with atopic dermatitis all that we know about atopic dermatitis. I really think these disease-specific conferences, you come in knowing some, you walk out knowing a lot. I think it's one of them, probably the most valuable educational experiences that I can think of.

For further information on the topics presented by Yu as well as other data in the atopic dermatitis space, view the latest conference coverage.

The quotes used in this Q&A interview summary were edited for the purposes of clarity.