To evaluate the disease burden (number of patients and characteristics of disease) and unmet medical needs (current status and inadequacy of medical treatment) in Chinese patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis (msPsO) .

High-quality real-world evidence on Chinese msPsO patients was sorted and reviewed in the MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, Wanfang, VIP, and CNKI databases from January 1st, 2012 to August 31st, 2022. The disease burden as well as challenges and shortcomings of systemic therapeutic drugs were analyzed in Chinese msPsO patients.

In China, msPsO patients made up a high proportion (67.0%) of psoriasis patients, and the number was estimated to be about 5 million. They were characterized by high severity of disease (the mean psoriasis area and severity index score of 16.3 points), large affected body surface area (22.1%), a high proportion of scalp psoriasis (63.1%), and high prevalence of comorbid metabolic syndrome (21.2%). Current evidence suggested that traditional oral therapeutic drugs were still challenged by limited efficacy and a high risk of adverse reactions, whereas patients showed relatively high rates (58.7% - 91.2%) of 75% improvement in psoriasis area and severity index (PASI75) response after 12-week treatment with biological agents; however, discontinuation of biological therapies was common after 52 weeks (15.0% - 54.2%), and the main reason was the lack of efficacy (8.3% - 31.4%), followed by economic pressures (5.6% - 19.0%) and adverse reactions (2.3% - 4.8%) .

The number of Chinese msPsO patients is relatively large, and there is an urgent need for new effective, durable, safe, and easily usable drugs to meet the demand for long-term therapeutic management of msPsO.

Psoriasis; Cost of illness; Biological agents; Treatment outcome; Drug toxicity; Meta-analysis as topic