Skin Capacitance Mapping of Early Effects of Methotrexate and Etanercept Biotherapy on Plaque Type Psoriasis

In its moderate-to-severe forms, psoriasis of the skin is an immune-mediated disorder that is commonly treated by biologicals. There is a need to design some objective noninvasive analytical methods for assessing the early signs of efficacy of such drugs. In recent years, in vivo real-time Skin Capacitance Mapping (SCM) has been offered for such evaluations. We presently assess SCM in two groups of 11 adult psoriatic patients treated with either Methotrexate (MTX) or Etanercept (ETC) monotherapies. Cyanoacrylate Skin Surface Strippings (CSSS) were collected at inclusion and after a 6-week period of treatment. The acute progression of psoriasis was identified by darker areas at SCM corresponding to subtle serosity deposits in the stratum corneum. CSSS and SCM seem to represent two noninvasive objective methods assessing the initial phase of psoriasis improvement following systemic therapies.