An update on clinical safety of adalimumab in treating psoriasis: A systematic review and meta-analysis based on 20 randomized controlled trials.

PURPOSE: The current meta-analysis was conducted to better evaluate the role of adalimumab for patients with psoriasis in terms of its safety profile on the basis of eligible randomized controlled trials (RCTs).

METHODS: The following electronic databases such as Cochrane, PubMed, and Embase database involving the index words were screened and identified for qualified studies updated to December 2018. Associated publications and sources were hand-searched for more related details. To further analyze the main outcomes, the odds ratio (OR) and mean difference (MD) with its 95% confidence interval (95% CI) were utilized.

RESULTS: There were a total of 20 RCTs involving respective 3795 and 3266 patients in the adalimumab and control group that met our inclusion criteria. According to the aggregated results, the adalimumab group was highly associated with significant improvement in the incidence of adverse event (AE), infection, and injection site reaction on comparison of the control group. Nevertheless, no remarkable differences were found between the two study groups in terms of the incidence of serious AE, serious infection as well as the discontinuation of study drug caused by AE.

CONCLUSION: Adalimumab was proved to be linked to higher incidence of AE, infection, and injection site reaction during the therapy process of psoriasis based on high-quality RCTs. In addition, there was no association between adalimumab therapy and serious AE, serious infection and the discontinuation of study drug caused by AE in patients harboring psoriasis according to eligible RCTs.