Efficacy, Safety of Deucravacitinib for Psoriasis, with Milaan Shah, MD

A recent expert consensus panel—the findings of which were published in the Journal of Drugs in Dermatology—was conducted by a team of investigators who sought to provide clinical recommendations on deucravacitinib’s efficacy, safety, and appropriate laboratory monitoring in psoriasis management.1

One of the investigators involved in the panel named Milaan Shah, MD, a Dermatology Resident at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, spoke with HCPLive’s editorial team in a recent interview. Shah was asked about the panel and some of the most notable takeaways regarding deucravacitinib and its use among patients with psoriasis.

“It’s a tried and true process in terms of trying to be able to combine the quantified information that's available, as well as some of those qualitative things that you see a little bit more from clinical exposure, and in the best method possible, trying to incorporate all of that,” Shah explained. “...Essentially, there were a series of articles [we reviewed] on deucravacitinib focused on treating plaque psoriasis.”

Shah described the panel, noting the comprehensive literature search of such databases as Scopus, PubMed, and Google Scholar. He highlighted the panel of 10 dermatologists with expertise in psoriasis management who reviewed the literature and crafted consensus statements using a modified Delphi process.

During the analysis, each statement by the panelists involved would be given supermajority approval and was then assigned a strength of recommendation through the use of the Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy (SORT) criteria. A total of 6 consensus statements resulted from the 14 articles selected by the investigative team.

“Of course, deucravacitinib is effective for psoriasis, but I think one of the key emphases of the panel was taking a look more at the safety profile and the adverse events associated with the medication use,” Shah said. “...That was a point of debate amongst the panel, the status of deucravacitinib within the JAK inhibitor family, given some of the TYK2 inhibitors being part of the JAK family. But in terms of side effect profile and some of the ways that it works, there are great differences within that. So we had a split, actually, halfway between the panel.”

The panelists did summarize that deucravacitinib falls under the JAK inhibitor family but highlighted the drug’s superior safety profile compared to traditional JAK inhibitors. Shah further noted that following their review of the clinical data, the panelists did not identify enough evidence of a causal role for the drug in inducing laboratory abnormalities and, therefore, did not recommend baseline and ongoing laboratory monitoring among individuals treated with deucravacitinib.

“In terms of monitoring, or triglycerides, LFTs, and things of that nature, if you look through all these, CPK levels are the one with more compelling evidence in regards to deucravacitinib potentially causing an elevation,” Shah said. “But even that was not significant. If you look through all these different phase 2 and phase 3 trials, you can see that the majority of them show that rates of those adverse events, in terms of elevations of liver enzymes, hypertriglyceridemia, CPK, and cholesterol, are about the same, if not higher or lower than placebo.”

For additional information on this panel and its findings, view Shah’s full interview posted above.

The quotes contained in this interview summary were edited for clarity.

References

1. Shah M, Burshtein J, Lebwohl M, et al. A Review of the Safety and Efficacy of Deucravacitinib for Plaque Psoriasis: An Expert Consensus Panel. J Drugs Dermatol. 2025 Feb 1;24(2):147-155. doi: 10.36849/JDD.8616. PMID: 39913225.