Amy Charlotte Foulkes

The University of Manchester · Institute of Inflammation and Repair

Biologic therapies for psoriasis can cause paradoxical eczema. The role of genetic factors in its pathogenesis are unknown. To identify risk variants, we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 3212 psoriasis patients, of whom 88 developed paradoxical eczema. Two lead single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) reached genome-wide significan...

Background Biologic and non-biologic immunomodulators, used to treat immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID), could impair the immune response to COVID-19 vaccines and therefore vaccine effectiveness. Objectives Our objective was to investigate the association between biologic and non-biologic immunomodulators and seroconversion following the...

Atopic eczema and psoriasis are chronic, inflammatory dermatoses that can significantly affect the quality of life of those affected. Although both diseases are common, they rarely occur together. Severe psoriasis can be treated with biologic therapies targeting specific cytokine pathways involved in disease pathogenesis. There are reports of parad...

The use of biologic therapies for the treatment of chronic plaque psoriasis has been linked to the development of atopic eczema, amongst other cutaneous adverse events. This can cause diagnostic confusion and create difficulty in the management of patients with plaque psoriasis. The main objective of this systematic review was to review all cases o...

Brodalumab is a recombinant, fully human monoclonal antibody (IgG2) which binds with high affinity to the interleukin (IL) 17 receptor A (IL17R). Brodalumab is now licensed and approved for the treatment of moderate-to-severe chronic plaque psoriasis in North America and Europe. As the third to market in the class of agents targeting IL-17, we revi...

Biologic therapies have shown high efficacy in psoriasis, but individual response varies and is poorly understood. To inform biomarker discovery in the Psoriasis Stratification to Optimise Relevant Therapy (PSORT) study, we evaluated a comprehensive array of omics platforms across three time-points and multiple tissues in a pilot investigation of t...

This review provides a summary of key findings from 27 systematic reviews of 51 articles first published or indexed during 2015, focusing on the treatment of psoriasis as well as precision medicine in psoriasis. Evidence supports weight loss interventions by dieting and exercise for the improvement in disease severity in overweight and obese patien...

The era of high throughput sequencing (HTS; otherwise known as next-generation sequencing) has revolutionised dermatological research. New publications describing successful translational research based on interpretation of omics data from dermatological sources appear each month. Bioinformatics refers to the tools used to collect, classify and ana...

High-throughput biology presents unique opportunities and challenges for dermatological research. Drawing on a small handful of exemplary studies, we review some of the major lessons of these new technologies. We caution against several common errors and introduce helpful statistical concepts that may be unfamiliar to researchers without experience...

Linked Article: Talamonti et al. Br J Dermatol 2017; 177:489–496.

Psoriasis is a model disease for the development of pharmacogenomic markers of treatment response, with ready access to diseased tissue and objective validated outcome measures. With the application of state-of-the-art technologies and investment in careful experimental design, the goal of stratified medicine in psoriasis may be possible. Current p...

Methotrexate continues to be one of the most widely used systemic immunosuppressive agents in dermatology. In addition to the important, well-characterized adverse effects such as hepatotoxicity and myelosuppression, methotrexate may induce a number of rare cutaneous adverse events including methotrexate-induced ulceration. We present a case of met...

A 49-year-old Caucasian male was referred to the Manchester Psoriasis Service with a 21-year history of severe chronic plaque psoriasis refractory to therapy with topical agents, phototherapy (TL-01), systemic agents (methotrexate, ciclosporin and fumaderm) and the biologic agents adalimumab and ustekinumab, including with concurrent ciclosporin th...

Patients who suffer from inflammatory skin disease are at risk of stigmatisation and physical and psychological co-morbidities. To an extent these issues can be offset by effective coping strategies. The cumulative balance of these interactions will often lead to impairment, especially in those whose coping mechanisms are maladaptive or do not exis...

Although catastrophic vascular complications in vascular Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) are well recognized, other complications such as flexion contractures and tendon nodules are rarely reported and poorly characterized. We report a young man with vascular EDS, who developed flexion contractures and tendon nodules, causing considerable disability....

Psoriatic arthritis remains a common cause of morbidity in patients with psoriasis. Little is known about the natural history of the disease and dermatologists do not consistently screen for its presence. We describe a patient with severe psoriasis where long-term biologic therapy with a tumour necrosis factor inhibitor was interrupted for clinical...

This review summarizes key clinical findings from 5 guidelines and 21 systematic reviews on psoriasis published or indexed in the period November 2009 to October 2010. The highlights include the British Association of Dermatologists guidelines on the use of biological interventions in psoriasis, and guidelines on the efficacy and use of acitretin....

We report three cases of thyrotoxicosis who presented acutely with headache to our neurology service in a 1-year period. In two of these patients there was a pre-existing or subsequent history of migraine. With hindsight, there were other clinical features of thyrotoxicosis but this diagnosis had been missed in primary care. Severe headache can be...