Table 1.
NB-UVB treatment cohort1.
Fig 1.
A. Timeline illustrating the 12-month pre-treatment and post-treatment periods, respectively, as well as the 16-week treatment interval (for details, see text). B. The distribution of the duration of NB-UVB treatment episodes across all patients. Dashed line: median (9.3 weeks). Solid line indicates the 16-week cut-off selected for beginning of the “post-treatment” observational window with n = 74 (4.2% of all) treatments exceeding this cut-off.
Fig 2.
The clinical outcome of NB-UVB-phototherapy on psoriasis.
A. Semi-quantitative outcome classes recorded for all phototherapy treatments (n = 1749), shown in number per patients (left y-axis), and as percentage of patients achieving either outcomes 0/1 or 2–5, respectively (right y-axis). B Outcomes achieved as a function of treatment duration, showing the percentage of patients in the lower 20th percentile (“short” = less than 21 sessions), in the 21-80th percentile (“normal’, 21–37 sessions), and above the 80th percentile (“long”), respectively. P < 0.0001 for the difference across all three groups (chi-square).
Fig 3.
The effect of NB-UVB on drug prescribing.
A. Top: Prescription of psoriasis-related (left) and–unrelated (right) drugs in psoriasis patients before (dark) and after (light shaded) NB-UVB phototherapy. H1 –antihistamine, Depr–anti-depressive drugs, HTN–antihypertensive drugs (for details see Methods). Shown is the percentage of patients on treatment. *** p <0.0001 (Qui-square); bottom: the number of scripts per patient in patients receiving treatment (data shown represent average ± s.e.m.). * p < 0.01 in a two-sided T-test. B. Histogram plots showing the overall distribution of prescriptions filled for the topical treatment classes psoriasis before (solid) and after NB-UVB (dashed), respectively.
Table 2.
The change in the number of patients receiving topical psoriasis- treatments after one course of NB-UVB phototherapy1.
Fig 4.
The change in psoriasis-specific drug prescribing before vs. after NB-UVB phototherapy in patients achieving different clinical outcomes.
A. The percentage of patients in each outcome class showing either a decrease, or an increase in the number of prescriptions for each drug class indicated. Black columns: outcomes 0/1 (“clear”, “minimal residual disease”), dark grey: outcome 2 (“moderate clearance”), light grey: outcomes 3/4/5 (“minimal change”, “no change”, “worsening”). B The change in prescriptions made per patient, compared between after vs. before NB-UVB treatment (detailed in Table 3), expressed as percentage reduction compared to baseline, for each of the outcome classes, as in A. *** p < 0.0001, ** p < 0.001, * p < 0.01 (chi-square for the difference between the three outcome classes).
Table 3.
The change in prescriptions per patient after NB-UVB phototherapy1.
Fig 5.
Clinical outcomes of NB-UVB treatment for psoriasis, and change in topical prescriptions made out for psoriasis, at four independent treatment sites, as indicated (b).
A, pie chart showing the percentage of the overall treatment cohort (n = 1749) receiving treatment at each individual site. B, The percentage of patients at each site exhibiting either a reduction, or increase in the number of topical prescriptions made out for psoriasis after compared to before NB-UVB treatment. C, The clinical outcome recorded at each site, shown as percent of patients assessed for each outcome. (Outcome classes are identical to those shown in Fig 2, above). D, The number of treatment session administered per NB-UVB course (average ± s.d.)