TOPLINE:

Treatment patterns for pediatric patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) showed significant variation by disease severity, with patients with Hurley stage III more likely to receive biologics and pain management prescriptions.

METHODOLOGY:

• To assess prescribing patterns for pediatric HS, researchers conducted a single-center retrospective chart review of 163 patients with HS, who were younger than 18 years (70.6% Black; 81% girls) at diagnosis and were seen by dermatologists between March 2019 and March 2020.
• Most patients had Hurley stage I disease (52%), 26% had Hurley stage II disease, and 22% had Hurley stage III disease.
• Board-certified pediatric dermatologists determined Hurley stage through chart documentation or evaluation of chart photos, with data analyzed using nonparametric and chi-square tests.
• Demographics, prior treatments, and prescriptions for analgesics (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs [NSAIDs] or opioids) were extracted from electronic health records.

TAKEAWAY:

• Patients with Hurley stage III disease showed significantly higher rates of biologic therapy use than those with stage I disease (58.3% vs 11.8%; P < .001), along with increased use of chlorhexidine (75.0% vs 47.1%; P = .009).
• Higher disease severity correlated with increased pain management prescriptions, with NSAID usage rising from 10.6% in stage I and 26.2% in stage II to 52.8% in stage III (P < .001). Opioid prescriptions increased from 3.6% in stage I to 31% in stage III (P < .001).
• Each one-stage increase in Hurley stage was associated with a 3.66-fold increase in odds of receiving a prescription for pain control (odds ratio, 3.66; P < .001).

IN PRACTICE:

“Pediatric HS patients with more severe disease receive more systemic medications and analgesics,” the study authors wrote. The study results, they added, “suggest biologics are increasingly prescribed for severe HS” in pediatric populations, as they are in adults, “although prescribing may be influenced by center practices and patient preferences.”

SOURCE:

The study was led by Hannah Neimy, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, and was published online on December 18 in Pediatric Dermatology.

LIMITATIONS:

Limitations included the retrospective design. Additionally, analgesic prescriptions could not be reliably distinguished between disease-related pain and postoperative use, and the single tertiary referral center population may have been biased toward more severe cases.

DISCLOSURES:

The project received support from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. Two authors reported receiving support from AbbVie, Boehringer Ingelheim, Eli Lilly and Company, Novartis, MoonLake Immunotherapeutics, Novartis, Pfizer, and UCB.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.