Options for Managing HS and Cutaneous Lymphoma, with Steven Daveluy, MD

In a recent interview with the HCPLive team at the 2025 New Wave Dermatology Conference, Steven Daveluy, MD, associate professor and program director at Wayne State University, spoke about the biggest takeaways from his talks on treating several dermatologic conditions and addressing concerns of patients with diverse skin types.

First, the HCPLive editorial team asked about Daveluy’s talk ‘Color-Centric Care: Enhancing Dermatologic Treatments for All Skin Types.’ Specifically, Daveluy was asked to give examples of racial disparities impacting dermatologic care and ways that dermatologists can address such disparities.

“In the literature, we've found a few different racial disparities in dermatology,” Daveluy explained. “There are disparities in psoriasis where patients aren't always offered the same therapeutics, including biologics, where we see that Black patients are offered biologics less frequently than White patients…In eczema, where you live and your parents' income, their education level, and housing situation, can impact the severity of your eczema for children.”

These examples, Daveluy noted, highlight a disparity that children have no control over but can, nevertheless, impact their lives and disease state. Later, Daveluy was asked to discuss the challenges when diagnosing cutaneous lymphoma.

“Cutaneous lymphoma can be very tricky to diagnose,” Daveluy said. “It can look a lot like eczema or psoriasis, and it actually may require multiple biopsies because it doesn't even show up on the first biopsy a lot of the time. Some of the clues are if it looks a little bit atrophic or has a kind of wrinkly texture. Also, if it's distributed in the bathing trunk distribution, or the areas like the buttocks, the groin areas, which are really sun-protected because you're wearing pants and underwear.”

Daveluy noted that cutaneous lymphoma also can appear at an older age, typically around the ages of 50 - 60. He noted the value of not making a misdiagnosis, given that some of the available medications for other conditions—such as TNF alpha inhibitors—can make it flare. Later, Daveluy was asked about addressing HS and about some of the drugs in the treatment pipeline for the condition.

“I'm really excited about some of the novel treatments coming for HS,” Daveluy explained. “We're seeing biologics that are targeting different pathways in the immune system, and it's actually making me learn new pathways in the immune system that I didn't even know about. And we're seeing a new class of drugs called nanobodies that work a lot like a biologic, because they block cytokines, but they're smaller, so they can get into tissue better.”

Daveluy highlighted that this, hopefully, will mean that nanobodies will be more beneficial in HS.

“I'm also excited that we're doing more studies on surgery, because most patients with HS need a combination of medications and surgery to treat the tunnels and the persistent lesions,” he said. “We haven't had a lot of research on surgery before. So there are some innovative things going on in that realm that should help guide us.”

For any additional information about these subjects, view Daveluy’s full interview video posted above this summary.

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