Evaluation of topical adjuvant treatment of psoriasis with recombinant epidermal growth factor to control the e-regulation of EGFR: a clinical study

Abstract Deregulation of the epidermal growth factor receptor, which belongs to the ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases, is detectable in psoriasis lesions and leads to uncontrolled cell growth, proliferation and differentiation of skin cells. To investigate the effect of epidermal growth factor receptor saturation with a high concentration of epidermal growth factor in a topical cream in the clinical setting in patients with mild to moderate psoriasis, we applied the cream with 5% growth factor in 11 patients and a cream with clobetasol, urea, salicylic acid and Eucerin without growth factor as control on 11 patients in parallel. The therapeutic effect was assessed by blinded clinicians using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) based on severity, erythema, induration and scaling. The result of the clinical trial showed that the PASI index for the standard treatment group was 3.76±1.93 before treatment and 2.9±1.83 after treatment, and for the group receiving EGF was 3.23±2.2 before intervention and 2.52±2.05 after intervention. Although the decrease in PASI was highly significant (p <.001) in both the standard and intervention groups before and after the study, individual comparison of each patient before and after treatment showed a significant (p <.001) decrease for the intervention group compared with the control group. We conclude that EGF as an adjuvant therapy can effectively control mild to moderate psoriatic lesions without causing side effects. Future clinical trials should be conducted to explore the therapeutic effects.