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How important is inclusion of younger ages - adolescent or pediatric – when it comes to indication for plaque psoriasis treatments?

Psoriasis

You. So my practice is about 50% pediatric, and I'm often thinking about my littler kids, my adolescents, along with those adults. And I think for me, not only is it really important to have treatments that are formally indicated for kids, because I think it really tells us that it has been studied in there, that it is safe and effective for that particular group. And we know kids are not just little adults. Sometimes they are, but in some ways they're not. And so it is nice to see things that are specifically studied. And I think the FDA has been so good about that in the last few years and increasing that to kids. You know, we need to treat kids. They really do get problems, and we can't just keep brushing it under the rug and saying, well, I guess we can try things off label in adults. It's just not ideal. So I love to see that we're now getting formal studies in kids. The other win for that situation. Not only then do we have something indicated for the appropriate age group and understand it well enough to talk to the patients and their families about it, but I think it also is incredibly reassuring for the older age groups. When I tell a patient that, hey, this has been FDA approved for the same condition in children, you often see their shoulders relax. They say, oh, cool, that's great. This tells me that not only has it been studied again, right, because we know each study opens up a potential can of worms, both safety and efficacy and all the issues that can come up, but if it's passed that test over and over and over, that reproducibility, and in a group of patients, that tends to be a little bit more sensitive and with maybe a lower threshold for getting concerned about side effects. Right. The kids, we don't have the same tolerance for letting things go awry. That can be incredibly empowering and I think very, very reassuring to all of us. I mean, when we give a patient a medicine, right, we're all on board. You know where to find me. We're responsible for this as well. So it's not just that I'm not trying to hurt people. I'm not. But I also would feel terrible if I did. Right. It's really both of those things. So I feel more empowered when we see things that are approved in younger ages. And in fact, some of our treatments, for example, in atopic dermatitis, we've seen them, adults, then adolescents, then children, and now down to babies. That is so reassuring to me. That's what I'd like to see for almost all medications that are appropriate, because then we really can feel good about using it for whom we need it. And even if we don't needed in that young group, I think it still informs us about the older age groups. So really nice and.