The U.S. Food and Drug Administration expanded the approval of Novartis AG's Cosentyx to include the treatment of moderate-to-severe scalp psoriasis.
The approval is based on the results of a phase 3 trial that demonstrated Cosentyx was more effective at treating the skin condition when compared to placebo.
Scalp psoriasis is one of the difficult-to-treat forms of psoriasis, a skin condition that causes red, flaky, crusty patches of skin covered with silvery scales.
Approximately half of all 125 million patients with psoriasis suffer from scalp psoriasis, which can be challenging to treat with topical agents or phototherapy due to the presence of hair and other factors.
Cosentyx, also known as secukinumab, is an inflammatory treatment that is already approved for plaque psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis in more than 70 countries.
Cosentyx was more recently found to be better than Johnson & Johnson's Stelara in treating moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, the most common type of the disease.
