WCD 2019 | Psoriasis, increasingly efficient therapies towards healing

Professor Jonathan Barker is attending the 2019 World Congress of Dermatology to raise treatments issues yet to be tackled.

Since the Millennium there have been significant advances for those patients affected by moderate to severe disease. Nevertheless there are still challenges to be addressed.

Dermatologist Professor Jonathan Barker, of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust in London said most patients globally have not benefitted from these therapeutic advances.

He added: “Access to specialist care remains highly problematic and many government agencies and health payers fail to recognise that psoriasis is an important life altering noncommunicable disease. The WHO psoriasis resolution in 2014 hopefully will help this issue in time as will the recognition that psoriasis is a component in the multimorbidity that an ageing and/or obese population will encounter.”

Professor Barker was part of the plenary panel of speakers attending the 2019 World Congress of Dermatology in Milan until 15 June 2019.

He said: “Even the best current treatments are only introduced after patients have suffered with psoriasis often for many years. Perhaps with advances in knowledge we can start to consider prevention”.

Professor Barker has been Academic Head of St John’s Institute of Dermatology since 2002 and presently is President of the European Dermatology Forum.