This Week in Dermatology — Oct 30, 2026
Generated Oct 31, 2026 · 11:51
The week's practice-changing Dermatology research, summarized for clinicians.
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52-Week Safety and Disease Control With Ruxolitinib Cream in Children Aged 2 to 11 Years With Atopic Dermatitis: Results From the Phase 3 TRuE-AD3 Study.
Over 52 weeks, as-needed ruxolitinib cream in children aged two to eleven with atopic dermatitis raised no new safety signals and maintained clear or almost clear skin in roughly three quarters.
Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology · 2026 · PubMed
This week’s papers
- 01
Relatlimab plus nivolumab versus nivolumab for advanced melanoma: 5-year survival and biomarker analyses of the phase 3 RELATIVITY-047 trial.
At five years, nivolumab plus relatlimab continued to improve progression-free, overall and melanoma-specific survival over nivolumab alone, with exploratory biomarkers suggesting it overcomes LAG-3-mediated resistance.
Long GV et al. · Nature Medicine · 2026
From the briefingWe start with skin cancer, where immune checkpoint blockade continues to move both into longer follow-up and closer to the dermatology clinic. In Nature Medicine, Long and colleagues report the five-year analysis of the phase three RELATIVITY-047 trial, which randomized 714 patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma to nivolumab plus the anti-LAG-3 antibody relatlimab, or nivolumab alone [1]. With a minimum follow-up of nearly five years, the combination continued to outperform monotherapy, cutting the risk of progression by roughly a quarter, the risk of death by a little over a fifth, and melanoma-specific death by close to thirty percent, and the authors describe these as the largest absolute differences seen in the trial to date. Safety was consistent with earlier reports. The exploratory biomarker work is the intriguing part: among patients with PD-L1 expression of at least one percent, high levels of LAG-3-positive CD8 cells in blood or tumor were linked with worse outcomes on nivolumab alone, and the combination was associated with less primary resistance. That supports the hypothesis that relatlimab overcomes a LAG-3-mediated escape route, though these biomarker analyses are post hoc and hypothesis-generating rather than ready for treatment selection.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 02
Intralesional cemiplimab for patients with early-stage cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma: Results from a dose-escalation study with expansion cohorts.
In a 41-patient phase one study, low-dose intralesional cemiplimab for 1 to 2 cm cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma was well tolerated and produced pathologic complete responses in roughly half to two thirds.
Migden M et al. · Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingAt the other end of the disease spectrum, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology publishes a phase one study from Migden and colleagues testing low-dose intralesional cemiplimab for early-stage cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma between one and two centimeters [2]. Across 41 patients, each with a single injected lesion, the safety profile was acceptable, and in the two expansion cohorts every treatment-emergent adverse event was grade two or lower. With 5 milligrams weekly for six weeks, the pathologic complete response rate at surgery was about 58 percent, and with the same dose every two weeks it was about two thirds. These are very small cohorts, the authors acknowledge that injection technique may have varied, and surgery remains the standard; what the study does is establish a dose, 5 milligrams weekly, for further trials of a non-surgical option.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 03
Targeted and Immune-Based Therapies in Cutaneous T-Cell Lymphomas: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Pooling 41 studies of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, brentuximab vedotin showed the highest response rate, near 69 percent, while mogamulizumab had the fewest severe adverse events, with responses generally lasting under a year.
Bai JQA et al. · JAMA Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingStaying with cutaneous lymphoma, a systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA Dermatology from Bai and colleagues pooled 41 studies and 1,660 patients treated with targeted or immune-based monotherapy for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma [3]. Brentuximab vedotin led on response, with roughly seven in ten patients responding, followed by interferon alfa and alemtuzumab, while mogamulizumab produced responses in just under half of patients but had the lowest rate of severe adverse events. Responses in Sézary syndrome tended to run higher than in mycosis fungoides, and median duration of response was generally under a year. Because these are pooled single-arm cohorts rather than head-to-head comparisons, the data inform rather than rank choices, and the authors frame them as support for weighing subtype, durability and toxicity together.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 04
A randomised double-blind placebo-controlled trial of topical menthol for pain relief during photodynamic therapy.
Topical 5 percent menthol cream failed to reduce pain compared with placebo during conventional photodynamic therapy for scalp actinic keratoses, and the trial was stopped early for futility.
Bajek D et al. · Clinical and Experimental Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingA brief but useful negative result also belongs in this section. In Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, Bajek and colleagues ran a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled within-patient trial of 5 percent topical menthol cream to reduce pain during conventional photodynamic therapy for scalp and forehead actinic keratoses [4]. The trial was stopped early after an interim analysis because pain scores stayed high, around six and a half on a ten-centimeter scale, and menthol made no meaningful difference compared with placebo. Despite promising preclinical data, the evidence does not support menthol as an analgesic for this procedure.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 05
52-Week Safety and Disease Control With Ruxolitinib Cream in Children Aged 2 to 11 Years With Atopic Dermatitis: Results From the Phase 3 TRuE-AD3 Study.
Over 52 weeks, as-needed ruxolitinib cream in children aged two to eleven with atopic dermatitis raised no new safety signals and maintained clear or almost clear skin in roughly three quarters.
Paller AS et al. · Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingOur second theme is long-term management and the wider footprint of chronic inflammatory skin disease. In the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Paller and colleagues report 52-week results from the phase three TRuE-AD3 study of ruxolitinib cream in children aged two to eleven with mild-to-moderate atopic dermatitis [5]. After the initial eight-week controlled phase, 282 children applied the 0.75 or 1.5 percent cream as needed for another 44 weeks. No new safety signals emerged, application site reactions occurred in about one percent of children, and there were no serious treatment-related adverse events. Among children randomized to ruxolitinib from the start, roughly three quarters had clear or almost clear skin at one year, with affected body surface area around two percent. The extension had no vehicle arm, so disease control cannot be attributed to the drug with the certainty of the controlled phase, but these data meaningfully extend the pediatric safety picture for a topical JAK inhibitor.
If you only have time for one paper this week, make it the TRuE-AD3 extension of ruxolitinib cream in young children [5]. It addresses the question that most shapes pediatric use of a topical JAK inhibitor, which is whether a year of as-needed application is safe in two- to eleven-year-olds, while leaving open how much of the sustained control reflects the drug itself.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 06
Phenome-wide Longitudinal Association Study of Hospital-recorded Comorbidity in Psoriasis.
In over 320,000 United Kingdom patients, psoriasis was linked to comorbidities across organ systems, notably liver disease, substance misuse and interstitial lung disease, generating hypotheses beyond current screening guidance.
Leonard G et al. · British Journal of Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingFor psoriasis, the British Journal of Dermatology publishes a phenome-wide longitudinal study from Leonard and colleagues that compared more than 320,000 people with psoriasis against about 1.7 million matched controls using linked United Kingdom primary and hospital records [6]. Across 225 groups of diagnoses, psoriasis was associated with outcomes throughout the body. Among the strongest long-term non-skin signals were liver disease, with nearly half again the risk, substance misuse including alcohol and tobacco, and interstitial lung disease, with about a third higher risk. Associations of this kind cannot establish causation, and the authors present the work as hypothesis-generating, but the interstitial lung disease signal in particular is less familiar than the metabolic and hepatic ones.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 07
Vitamin D status and systemic inflammatory burden as a predictor of biologic treatment response in psoriasis -A pilot study in Northern Ireland.
In 120 psoriasis patients on biologics, higher vitamin D independently predicted achieving 90 percent clearance, while higher BMI and CRP were linked to poorer response, in preliminary cross-sectional data.
Rahman KL et al. · Clinical and Experimental Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingAlso on psoriasis, a pilot cross-sectional study from Rahman and colleagues in Clinical and Experimental Dermatology looked at 120 adults on biologics in Belfast [7]. Patients reaching ninety percent skin clearance had roughly double the vitamin D levels of other patients and lower body mass index, and higher vitamin D independently predicted that level of response, while higher C-reactive protein was linked to frequent biologic switching. The cross-sectional design means vitamin D could be a marker of something else, such as weight or sun exposure, rather than a driver of response, so this is early, single-centre evidence that a predictive algorithm might be worth building.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 08
Site-Specific Treatment and Remission Patterns in Multisite Mucous Membrane Pemphigoid.
Fewer than half of 77 patients with multisite mucous membrane pemphigoid achieved simultaneous remission at all sites, with persistent oral and ocular disease the main barriers despite frequent site-level response.
McAleer L et al. · JAMA Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingOur final theme covers blistering, metabolic and genetic skin disease, where the burden often extends well beyond the skin. In JAMA Dermatology, McAleer and colleagues reviewed 77 patients with multisite mucous membrane pemphigoid at a single Texas referral centre, nearly nine in ten of whom had high-risk ocular, laryngeal, esophageal or anogenital involvement [8]. Every patient improved and most patients achieved complete remission at one or more sites, yet fewer than half of patients reached simultaneous remission everywhere, and that took a median of about two and a half years. Persistent oral and eye disease were the usual obstacles, and among patients who reached site-level remission, close to half of patients relapsed, most often in the mouth and eyes. Rituximab-based regimens and JAK inhibitors were associated with high improvement rates, while cyclophosphamide monotherapy and JAK inhibitors carried the most serious adverse events. As a retrospective single-centre cohort it cannot compare treatments fairly, but it makes a strong case for site-specific outcome measures in future trials.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 09
Estrogen Use and Porphyria Cutanea Tarda.
In Danish nationwide registries, estrogen-containing therapy roughly doubled the odds of incident porphyria cutanea tarda in women, with the association confined to oral rather than non-oral routes.
Erichsen PA et al. · JAMA Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingAlso in JAMA Dermatology, Erichsen and colleagues used Danish nationwide registries to test a long-held clinical belief that estrogen triggers porphyria cutanea tarda [9]. Comparing 438 women with incident disease against nearly 44,000 matched controls, any estrogen-containing therapy in the prior year roughly doubled the odds of the disease after adjustment for liver disease, hepatitis, HIV, iron overload, smoking and alcohol. Contraceptives, estrogen-only therapy and combined hormone therapy were all implicated. The key nuance is route: oral estrogen was associated with the disease, while non-oral routes were not, which fits a hepatic first-pass mechanism. This is observational, but it puts the association on a much firmer footing than the case reports it replaces, and it adds route of administration to the question of hormone-related risk.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
- 10
Understanding the Experiences and Needs of Parents With Children With Epidermolysis Bullosa. A Qualitative Study to Inform the Development of a Self-help Toolkit.
Parents of children with epidermolysis bullosa described sadness, worry and guilt alongside heavy caregiving, supporting family-wide psychosocial self-help tools possibly adapted from acceptance and commitment therapy.
Hughes O et al. · British Journal of Dermatology · 2026
From the briefingFinally, in the British Journal of Dermatology, Hughes, Martin and Thompson interviewed parents of children with epidermolysis bullosa alongside expert clinicians [10]. Parents described sadness, worry about the future and guilt layered on top of demanding physical care, and clinicians corroborated the need for tailored psychosocial support. The authors conclude that any self-help toolkit would need to address siblings and the wider family, and that acceptance and commitment therapy approaches may fit if adapted to that family context.
Written by AI from the published abstract, for healthcare professionals. Not medical advice; check the paper before acting on it.
The full briefing
This AudioScholar briefing is generated by artificial intelligence for healthcare professionals and trainees. It is not medical advice.
Welcome to This Week in Dermatology. This week we're covering 10 notable papers spanning cutaneous oncology and immunotherapy, long-term management of inflammatory skin disease, and the harder edges of blistering, metabolic and genetic skin conditions. Let's dive in.
We start with skin cancer, where immune checkpoint blockade continues to move both into longer follow-up and closer to the dermatology clinic. In Nature Medicine, Long and colleagues report the five-year analysis of the phase three RELATIVITY-047 trial, which randomized 714 patients with unresectable or metastatic melanoma to nivolumab plus the anti-LAG-3 antibody relatlimab, or nivolumab alone [1]. With a minimum follow-up of nearly five years, the combination continued to outperform monotherapy, cutting the risk of progression by roughly a quarter, the risk of death by a little over a fifth, and melanoma-specific death by close to thirty percent, and the authors describe these as the largest absolute differences seen in the trial to date. Safety was consistent with earlier reports. The exploratory biomarker work is the intriguing part: among patients with PD-L1 expression of at least one percent, high levels of LAG-3-positive CD8 cells in blood or tumor were linked with worse outcomes on nivolumab alone, and the combination was associated with less primary resistance. That supports the hypothesis that relatlimab overcomes a LAG-3-mediated escape route, though these biomarker analyses are post hoc and hypothesis-generating rather than ready for treatment selection.
At the other end of the disease spectrum, the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology publishes a phase one study from Migden and colleagues testing low-dose intralesional cemiplimab for early-stage cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma between one and two centimeters [2]. Across 41 patients, each with a single injected lesion, the safety profile was acceptable, and in the two expansion cohorts every treatment-emergent adverse event was grade two or lower. With 5 milligrams weekly for six weeks, the pathologic complete response rate at surgery was about 58 percent, and with the same dose every two weeks it was about two thirds. These are very small cohorts, the authors acknowledge that injection technique may have varied, and surgery remains the standard; what the study does is establish a dose, 5 milligrams weekly, for further trials of a non-surgical option. Staying with cutaneous lymphoma, a systematic review and meta-analysis in JAMA Dermatology from Bai and colleagues pooled 41 studies and 1,660 patients treated with targeted or immune-based monotherapy for cutaneous T-cell lymphoma [3]. Brentuximab vedotin led on response, with roughly seven in ten patients responding, followed by interferon alfa and alemtuzumab, while mogamulizumab produced responses in just under half of patients but had the lowest rate of severe adverse events. Responses in Sézary syndrome tended to run higher than in mycosis fungoides, and median duration of response was generally under a year. Because these are pooled single-arm cohorts rather than head-to-head comparisons, the data inform rather than rank choices, and the authors frame them as support for weighing subtype, durability and toxicity together.
A brief but useful negative result also belongs in this section. In Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, Bajek and colleagues ran a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled within-patient trial of 5 percent topical menthol cream to reduce pain during conventional photodynamic therapy for scalp and forehead actinic keratoses [4]. The trial was stopped early after an interim analysis because pain scores stayed high, around six and a half on a ten-centimeter scale, and menthol made no meaningful difference compared with placebo. Despite promising preclinical data, the evidence does not support menthol as an analgesic for this procedure.
Our second theme is long-term management and the wider footprint of chronic inflammatory skin disease. In the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, Paller and colleagues report 52-week results from the phase three TRuE-AD3 study of ruxolitinib cream in children aged two to eleven with mild-to-moderate atopic dermatitis [5]. After the initial eight-week controlled phase, 282 children applied the 0.75 or 1.5 percent cream as needed for another 44 weeks. No new safety signals emerged, application site reactions occurred in about one percent of children, and there were no serious treatment-related adverse events. Among children randomized to ruxolitinib from the start, roughly three quarters had clear or almost clear skin at one year, with affected body surface area around two percent. The extension had no vehicle arm, so disease control cannot be attributed to the drug with the certainty of the controlled phase, but these data meaningfully extend the pediatric safety picture for a topical JAK inhibitor.
For psoriasis, the British Journal of Dermatology publishes a phenome-wide longitudinal study from Leonard and colleagues that compared more than 320,000 people with psoriasis against about 1.7 million matched controls using linked United Kingdom primary and hospital records [6]. Across 225 groups of diagnoses, psoriasis was associated with outcomes throughout the body. Among the strongest long-term non-skin signals were liver disease, with nearly half again the risk, substance misuse including alcohol and tobacco, and interstitial lung disease, with about a third higher risk. Associations of this kind cannot establish causation, and the authors present the work as hypothesis-generating, but the interstitial lung disease signal in particular is less familiar than the metabolic and hepatic ones. Also on psoriasis, a pilot cross-sectional study from Rahman and colleagues in Clinical and Experimental Dermatology looked at 120 adults on biologics in Belfast [7]. Patients reaching ninety percent skin clearance had roughly double the vitamin D levels of other patients and lower body mass index, and higher vitamin D independently predicted that level of response, while higher C-reactive protein was linked to frequent biologic switching. The cross-sectional design means vitamin D could be a marker of something else, such as weight or sun exposure, rather than a driver of response, so this is early, single-centre evidence that a predictive algorithm might be worth building.
Our final theme covers blistering, metabolic and genetic skin disease, where the burden often extends well beyond the skin. In JAMA Dermatology, McAleer and colleagues reviewed 77 patients with multisite mucous membrane pemphigoid at a single Texas referral centre, nearly nine in ten of whom had high-risk ocular, laryngeal, esophageal or anogenital involvement [8]. Every patient improved and most patients achieved complete remission at one or more sites, yet fewer than half of patients reached simultaneous remission everywhere, and that took a median of about two and a half years. Persistent oral and eye disease were the usual obstacles, and among patients who reached site-level remission, close to half of patients relapsed, most often in the mouth and eyes. Rituximab-based regimens and JAK inhibitors were associated with high improvement rates, while cyclophosphamide monotherapy and JAK inhibitors carried the most serious adverse events. As a retrospective single-centre cohort it cannot compare treatments fairly, but it makes a strong case for site-specific outcome measures in future trials.
Also in JAMA Dermatology, Erichsen and colleagues used Danish nationwide registries to test a long-held clinical belief that estrogen triggers porphyria cutanea tarda [9]. Comparing 438 women with incident disease against nearly 44,000 matched controls, any estrogen-containing therapy in the prior year roughly doubled the odds of the disease after adjustment for liver disease, hepatitis, HIV, iron overload, smoking and alcohol. Contraceptives, estrogen-only therapy and combined hormone therapy were all implicated. The key nuance is route: oral estrogen was associated with the disease, while non-oral routes were not, which fits a hepatic first-pass mechanism. This is observational, but it puts the association on a much firmer footing than the case reports it replaces, and it adds route of administration to the question of hormone-related risk.
Finally, in the British Journal of Dermatology, Hughes, Martin and Thompson interviewed parents of children with epidermolysis bullosa alongside expert clinicians [10]. Parents described sadness, worry about the future and guilt layered on top of demanding physical care, and clinicians corroborated the need for tailored psychosocial support. The authors conclude that any self-help toolkit would need to address siblings and the wider family, and that acceptance and commitment therapy approaches may fit if adapted to that family context.
If you only have time for one paper this week, make it the TRuE-AD3 extension of ruxolitinib cream in young children [5]. It addresses the question that most shapes pediatric use of a topical JAK inhibitor, which is whether a year of as-needed application is safe in two- to eleven-year-olds, while leaving open how much of the sustained control reflects the drug itself.
Here is what this week's evidence adds up to in Dermatology. First, dual LAG-3 and PD-1 blockade in advanced melanoma now has five-year randomized evidence of durable survival benefit over nivolumab alone, while the biomarker story explaining who benefits most remains exploratory. Second, intralesional cemiplimab shows encouraging pathologic clearance of small squamous cell carcinomas, but in a phase one study of 41 patients that is nowhere near displacing surgery. Third, year-long data now support the safety of as-needed ruxolitinib cream in young children with atopic dermatitis, with the caveat that the extension was uncontrolled. Fourth, oral but not non-oral estrogen is linked to roughly double the odds of porphyria cutanea tarda in a large registry study, a finding that is observational but considerably stronger than prior evidence. And fifth, psoriasis comorbidity extends further than screening guidance currently reflects, including liver and interstitial lung disease, though causation and the value of vitamin D as a response marker are both still unsettled.
That's your roundup for This Week in Dermatology. The full transcript and references are available on the episode page. This is an AI-curated summary — for clinical decisions, always consult primary sources and current guidelines. See you next week.
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