This year’s American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Annual Meeting held March 25-29 in Boston, Massachusetts, covered a breakthrough therapy for the management of vitiligo, clinical and epidemiological differences of certain dermatologic diseases, and the role of dietary triggers on patient outcomes.

Here are the conference highlights from AAD 2022.

Ruxolitinib Cream Shows Improved Efficacy, Sustained Safety in Vitiligo After Extended Follow-up

Late-breaking findings from 2 phase 3 studies, TRuE-V1 (NCT04052425) and TRuE-V2 (NCT04057573), showed ruxolitinib cream (Opzelura) monotherapy was associated with clinically significant improvement in facial and total body repigmentation vs vehicle (nonmedicated cream) in the treatment of adolescent and adult patients with nonsegmental vitiligo over 52 weeks.

Following these findings, ruxolitinib cream became the first and only FDA-approved treatment for repigmentation in patients with vitiligo.

Precision Medicine Considerations in Melanoma: Identifying Patients and Optimizing Genetic, Molecular Testing

Genetic and molecular testing has shown potential regarding diagnosis and treatment decision-making for melanoma and other cancers, but deciding which tests to use and who would benefit from such testing warrants consideration among dermatologists. Experts of a panel discussion at AAD 2022 provided criteria for determining patient risk of melanoma, the benefits and challenges of certain molecular tests, and the influence of comorbidities on treatment selection.

“Molecular profiling of melanomas gives us the ability to select patients who will respond to treatment, at least initially, and particularly if they have BRAF mutations…biomarkers like circulating tumor DNA will play a role as we move forward in also identifying who’s going to respond to treatments,” said Justine Cohen, DO, clinical assistant professor of Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

Panel Reviews Dietary Triggers, Best Practices for Management of Dermatologic Diseases

Another panel discussion addressed the potential mediating role of dietary triggers in the symptom burden of several dermatological conditions. When advising patients with atopic dermatitis (AD), whose disease is characterized by high morbidity, one panelist said that the subject of food and skin commonly comes up during appointments, which can garner passionate opinions potentially rooted in misinformation.

“Many families and patients come in convinced food is the reason for the skin problem….The truth is, though, that when we look at unselected patients, meaning people that don’t have a known specific food allergy, the data really suggests that just excluding foods really doesn’t help,” said Peter A. Lio, MD, FAAD, assistant professor of Clinical Dermatology and Pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and the director of the Northwestern University Eczema Care and Education Center.

Delving Into Clinical, Epidemiological Differences of Adult, Pediatric Atopic Dermatitis

Jonathan Silverberg, associate professor of dermatology, director of clinical research and patch testing, George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, discussed key differences regarding epidemiology, genetic risk factors, and clinical manifestations of pediatric and adult-onset AD.

AD is commonly considered a pediatric disease, but an estimated 5.9 million US adults have moderate to severe disease. “The problem is we know very little about [adolescent and adult] subsets of patients clinically,” Silverberg said. “So there’s a lot of gaps there in terms of our knowledge.”