If you live with psoriasis, you know treatment options can feel like a trade-off between creams that don’t always go far enough and injections that ask for a bigger commitment. A daily pill that starts working quickly and keeps working could make that decision a lot easier, and new research suggests one is in development.
As reported by HCPLive, an investigational once-daily pill called prifemilast significantly improved skin in adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis across clinical trials presented at the 2026 Fall Clinical Dermatology Conference in Las Vegas.
What the Research Shows
In the larger placebo-controlled trial of 505 adults, up to 57 percent of those taking the pill saw their psoriasis improve by at least 75 percent after 16 weeks, compared with about 11 percent of those taking a placebo. Improvements showed up as early as two weeks into treatment and held steady through a full year.
According to a press release from the drug’s developers, cAMPfield Therapeutics and Newsoara Biopharma, a separate head-to-head trial also presented at the meeting included 607 people. In it, 65 percent of those on prifemilast reached that same 75 percent improvement, compared with 35 percent of those taking Otezla (apremilast), an oral psoriasis pill already on the market.
How It Works
Prifemilast is a PDE4B inhibitor, a type of drug that calms inflammation from inside the cell. It’s the same class as Otezla, but taken once a day instead of twice.
What About the Side Effects?
Most side effects were mild or moderate, and very few people stopped taking the pill because of them. Pills in this class have a history of causing stomach upset, and the company says prifemilast’s safety profile was consistent with the class overall, so it’s too early to say how it compares.
What This Means for You
For now, prifemilast isn’t available anywhere. According to the developers, a marketing application is planned in China by the end of the year, and no U.S. timeline has been announced. All of the trials were sponsored by the drug’s developers and run only in China, so it’s too early to know how it will perform in a wider group of people. If the results hold up in future studies, it could give people with psoriasis and their dermatologists one more oral option to talk through.
