I'm pleased to report that, after 9 weeks of phototherapy, it is much better. It has virtually gone on my top half, but the plaques on my legs are still stubbornly visible, although much better. The fact that it hasn't gone away entirely yet means its probably not going to clear up. Without wanting to sound over-dramatic, it actually feels like quite a bit to deal with- I've never had any long-term health conditions before, and although I've become slightly more confident, I'm still really conscious and nervous of having to expose any affected skin.
A while ago, my Mum rang me. "There's this new product out that says its for psoriasis, shall I buy you it so you can try it and see if it works?". To be honest, it was tempting, but when she told me the price £29.99 for just 150g, I declined. Skin diseases really can have an enormous impact on your life, and leave you desperate to try anything to find that one miracle that will get rid of it once and for all. Since then, I've seen it prominently displayed in quite a few pharmacies, hailed on shelf-edges as a 'breakthrough in psoriasis treatment'. So the big question is, is there any evidence that it works?
The product is Dermalex, and it is made by Omega Pharma. If their name sounds familiar to you, that may be because they also produce Prevalin, the overpriced, overcomplicated, under-evidenced Vaseline substitute for hayfever. This leaves me with a slight prickling of my skepticism, but lets keep an open mind for now.
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| This poor chap obviously has some practical joker friends who like to write words of skin conditions in his sun tan lotion when he is sleeping in the sun. |
How is it supposed to work? Well, the fact that the website itself titles this section "How its works?" (sic) begins to worry me slightly. I know this blog is liberally sprinkled with typos and spelling errors, but at least I have the courtesy of being shameful about it. In a professional website selling a quality medicinal product, I don't think spelling errors are acceptable, and there are a few dotted around the whole website. Nowhere on the website does it actually tell you what is in the product. Its said to:
"Reduce Psoriasis symptoms by: Normalising skin cell production and Acceleration of the recovery of the skin barrier
and
Fortify the skin barrier through: The creation of a protective shield on the skin by means of Alumino silicates against outside to inside insults (bacterial superantigens & toxins) through the non-intact skin barrier.
Providing a barrier to water loss"
This is helpfully illustrated by a diagram of the skin, which has labels that don't correspond to any numbers at all- either they're deliberately trying to make it look all science-like and confusing, to make the patient think "this is too complicated for me, so it must work", or its just sloppy oversight. Either way is bad enough.
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| Some labels on those numbers would be nice. Unless there really are little blue circles with random number in them floating about in the layers of our skin. |
We can pretty much entirely discount the claims for "fortifying the skin barrier". All this means is moisturing the skin, and a plain old (cheaper) emollient will do just as good a job at that. Once again, this seems to be Omega Pharma reinventing the Vaseline-greased wheel. As for the former claims, well, I need to see some evidence to corroborate them and decide if they are reasonable or not. So let's have a little lookie, shall we?
Having had a bit of a dig about on the website, I could see no clinical evidence. So of course I emailled the manufacturers, and got back a curt response after several days telling me to look at this page for references. So, here it is, the grand total of the evidence that Dermalex Psoriasis works:
"PASI based clinical efficacy study of Dermalex Psoriasis cream for the treatment of Psoriasis Vulgaris symptoms in a mono application therapy, Józsefváros Health Center, Budapest, Hungary; Open Label Clinical Study into the overall efficacy of Dermalex Psoriasis Cream, 2008, Dermatology and Psoriasis Clinics Laudau and Kandel, Germany"
For some reason, Omega Pharma seem to want to throw away the usual format of referencing- the one that is accepted and good enough for use in the rest of the medical profession. These references do not give me enough information to find the original studies, so what use are they? I've emailled them back to ask for standard reference formats, including where the studies are published, and have been greeted with a loud silence. I've tried googling the titles, and this brings up nothing, suggesting that they haven't even been published.
Why isn't the evidence published anywhere? How many patients were involved? What are the study designs? What were the results, and the statistical analysis of the results? Without answers to any of these questions, all I can do is discount this as evidence at the moment.
Of course I didn't just leave my research there, in the hands of the manufacturers. I've also had a look myself at the medical literature. And could I find anything at all for whether Dermalex works for psoriasis? Not a sausage.
You're supposed to apply this stuff three times a day. 150 grams will not last you long at that rate. That makes this a whoppingly expensive product. The national minimum wage in the UK is £6.31, meaning one pack would be equivalent to just under 5 hours work. I simply don't think that a couple of unpublished trials that may or may not say it works is a good enough reason to justify the expense. They're either being deliberately evasive about the evidence, or remarkably blase with people's hard earned cash.
They say beauty is only skin deep. It would seem that the evidence that Dermalex is even more shallow than that.
Hxxx
Update: I was contacted by the manufacturers of Dermalex, who promised to provide me with the references I asked for above. Here is the response I've gotten, with my response to the points they have raised below. .
Thank you for your enquiry regarding Dermalex.
As you may be aware, the Dermalex range contains a number of
different products to treat the following conditions; atopic eczema, contact
eczema, psoriasis, rosacea, atopic eczema for babies and children. Please rest
assured that all Omega Pharma products have been produced under strict
guidelines and regulations.
A range of proprietary studies have been
conducted across the Dermalex product portfolio and as medical devices, these
products have undergone statutory trials to ensure they meet the safety and
efficacy standards required by regulatory bodies to demonstrate an impact on
skin pathologies.
Medical devices are designed, engineered and
formulated, in compliance with the UNI EN ISO 14971:2009 and 13485 guidelines.
This means that each step of development and marketing has been strictly
regulated to ensure the safety and efficacy of the products. All testing is
carried out by medical device status certified organizations, which include
leading dermatology research centres. In addition, all studies were conducted by
practicing clinicians. Please note that these studies include varying number of
participants and study designs.
The research behind the Dermalex range is
ongoing - we are working towards publishing data on the product range this year
to ensure we are able to communicate the efficacy and safety of these products
to healthcare professionals. We are working closely with the University of
Amsterdam and are looking to publish the first set of results in the
International Journal of Contact Eczema. We will also be presenting this
data at the upcoming conference on ‘impaired skin barrier in the pathogenesis of
atopic and contact dermatitis’ in Amsterdam in June.
To date, we have conducted six trials across
the product portfolio involving nearly 200 patients. The products have also been
used in in Belgium, France, The Netherlands, UK, Italy, Portugal, Austria,
Switzerland, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Turkey and Australia, among
nearly 3 million sufferers.
All Dermalex products are well tolerated and
have been clinically proven to work. In summary, the trials
showed:
· Dermalex Contact Eczema produces symptom improvement comparable to
prescription drug treatments
· Dermalex Atopic Eczema (Babies & Children and Adult formulations)
effectively relieves both objective and subjective symptoms of contact or atopic
eczema
· Dermalex Psoriasis is effective against objective and subjective
symptoms of psoriasis
· Dermalex Rosacea & Couperose is effective against objective and
subjective symptoms of rosacea
We hope that this information is useful and thank you for
taking the time to contact us."
Firstly: I was aware that Dermalex is being sold as a medical device, but only because of those telltale words "Clinically proven!" and based on knowledge of Omega Pharma's other product, Prevalin. the fact it is classed as a medical device (and therefore not subject to the rigorous clinical testing of a real medicine) is even less prominent on the Dermalex website than it is on the Prevalin website.
The rest of the e-mail appears to be a lengthy way of saying "We don't have any trials published yet, and no, you can't have any results in order to make up your own mind whether or not it works, you'll just have to take our word for it.".
What's particularly interesting is that the International Journal of Contact Eczema doesn't appear to actually exist, as nothing at all is coming up for it on a Google search.
They say they have conducted six trials, which initially sounds reasonable. But this is across the product range, which includes at least four products and also children's versions. 200 people over six trials is not a lot- if shared equally that is only 33 patients per trial, and assuming they're placebo controlled, that would only mean that 16 patients per trial are actually exposed to the product- nowhere near enough to claim clinical significance of any results. Stating that the product has been used in other countries is meaningless, unless it is backed up by good, robust clinical trials. Its a logical fallacy- an appeal to popularity. Just being used doesn't mean it works- people might just try it once, or use it on the basis of advertising alone, but the product could still be ineffective.
So here's my main problem. How do Dermalex justify charging such an enormous price for a product before they have proven its efficacy. If good quality research had been undertaken prior to marketing, and robust results said that it worked, then that's one thing. But charging people £29.99 for "We think it might work, but we don't know yet because we're still doing research now, and the trials we've done so far that haven't been published yet in a non-existent journal are too small to decide" is, to my mind, entirely unjustified.
