Background: Once-daily brimonidine tartrate (BT) 0.5% gel was shown to provide significantly greater efficacy vs. vehicle for the treatment of facial erythema in patients with rosacea.
Objectives: To demonstrate that patient satisfaction with overall appearance is correlated with reduction in facial erythema, as measured by clinician and patient assessments.
Methods: Data from two identical phase III, multicentre, randomized, controlled trials of moderate facial erythema of rosacea (study A: n = 260; study B: n = 293) with topical BT 0.5% compared to vehicle gel once-daily for 4 weeks were analysed. Correlations of Patient's Assessment of Appearance (PAA) with Clinician's Erythema Assessment (CEA) and Patient's Self-Assessment (PSA) of erythema were evaluated by calculation of gamma statistics.
Results: PAA correlated with CEA post-application on Days 1, 15 and 29 for the intent-to-treat population and provided a median gamma value of 0.57 (min = 0.28, max = 0.61). PAA and PSA was also highly correlated post-application on Days 1, 15 and 29; with a median gamma value of 0.87 (min = 0.66, max = 0.89). Subjects who achieved a clinically meaningful improvement in both CEA and PSA scales were more likely to report satisfaction with the overall appearance of their skin (P < 0.001).
Conclusions: Both one- and two-grade improvements in facial erythema assessed by subjects (PSA) and clinicians (CEA) correlate well with PAA, a patient-centered representation of meaningful change.
© 2014 European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.