New Findings on Risankizumab for Genital and Scalp Psoriasis, with Eingun James Song, MD

In his interview at the Dermatology Education Foundation (DERM) 2025 NP/PA CME Conference, Eingun James Song, MD, highlighted some of the biggest takeaways from his team’s phase 4 research in the UnlIMMited study.1

Song, who serves as director of clinical research at Frontier Dermatology, spoke in a previous interview about his team’s efficacy findings on risankizumab for genital and scalp psoriasis.2 Here, he was asked about some of the secondary endpoints and the implications of all of the study’s findings on risankizumab.

“In addition to the ‘clear or almost clear’ [findings], there were various secondary endpoints that we were looking at, and these ranged from skin clearance metrics like the Psoriasis Scalp Severity Index, which is like a PASI score for the scalp, and a lot of patient-reported outcome data as well. This is so important for high-impact areas, because the whole idea here is that these are [patients with] lower body surface area involvement, but high impact on quality of life. So we wanted to show that the quality of life also mirrored the skin clearance.”

For example, Song pointed out that when looking at the genital psoriasis patient population, 60% of these patients reported that their quality of life improved to the point where their psoriasis had little or no impact on their overall quality of life. Later, he also highlighted impacts on patients’ sexual health.

“One of the real interesting questions that we are looking at in the genital population was the impact on sexual frequency,” Song said. “We know that if you have psoriasis that affects your genital skin, it's most likely going to affect how often you're going to engage in sexual activity. We did see that on average, most of these patients say that their psoriasis, at least sometimes, will affect their sexual frequency. That was actually one of the secondary endpoints in this study. At the 16-week endpoint, we saw that over seven out of 10 patients said that, once they started risankizumab, 70%-plus of the patients said that their psoriasis now had no or very little impact on the amount of sexual activity that they were having.”

Song lastly discussed patients with scalp psoriasis in the study who were treated with risankizumab.

“When it comes to scalp, one of the key secondary endpoints was itch reduction,” Song explained. “For whatever reason, scalp psoriasis tends to be even itchier than other areas, and as a result, when we scratch the scalp, it Koebnerizes and makes it even harder to treat. But we did see high levels of itch reduction in the scalp population. Some people even got to the point where their itching, burning, redness, and pain went completely to zero, which wasn't statistically significant when he compared it to the placebo group. But still, we saw a very, very positive trend in favor of using risankizumab.”

To find out more, view Song’s full interview segment posted in the video above. For more research covered at the DERM 2025 conference, view our latest coverage here.

The quotes implemented in this summary were edited for the purposes of clarity.

References

1. Song EJ, Ackerman L, Anschutz T, et al. Safety and Efficacy of Risankizumab in Genital and Scalp Psoriasis in the UnlIMMited Phase 4 Randomized Clinical Trial at Week 16. Poster presented at the DERM 2025 NP/PA CME Conference; July 23 - 26, 2025; Las Vegas, Nevada.

2. Song E. Discussing Risankizumab Efficacy in Genital and Scalp Psoriasis, with Eingun James Song, MD. HCPLive. July 24, 2025. https://www.hcplive.com/view/discussing-risankizumab-efficacy-genital-scalp-psoriasis-eingun-james-song-md.