Facial repigmentation from Opzelura is associated with improve quality of life scores | AAD 2026
Key Takeaways
- Randomized TRuE‑V1/TRuE‑V2 transitioned at week 24 to ruxolitinib cream for all participants, with continued treatment through weeks 52 and 104 in the LTE.
- At weeks 24 and 52, achieving F‑VASI75 or F‑VASI90 correlated with significantly better DLQI and VitiQoL outcomes versus nonresponders.
Results show that after two years, the nonresponders' scores on quality of life assessments catch up with the responders.
In an open-label treatment extension of Opzelura (1.5% ruxolitinib cream) as a treatment for vitiligo, repigmentation on the face was associated with improved quality of life, although after two years, the quality of life scores of the nonresponders were comparable to many of those who did respond to the cream, according to results presented recently at the 2026 American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Annual Meeting.
Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease that causes skin depigmentation. The FDA approved Opzelura as a treatment for nonsegmental vitiligo, the most common form of the disease, in 2022.
In the TRuE-V1 and TRuE-2 studies, researchers randomly assigned stuy participants to Opzelura or a “vehicle cream,” which is the cream without the active ingredient, which was ruxolitinib in this case. At Week 24, all the patients could continue applying Opzelura, and at Week 52, they could continue to do so for another 52 weeks in what was dubbed TRuE-V LTE, according to the poster summarizing the results that was presented at the AAD meeting, which was held March 27-31 in Denver.
Lead author of the poster,
Gooderham and her colleagues reported in that at week 24, patients achieving
F-VASI75 and F-VASI90 demonstrated significant improvements in QoL compared with nonresponders on both DLQI and VitiQo scales. Patients achieving F-VASI50 — to less repigmenttion — at week 24 also had significant QoL improvements compared with nonresponders when it came to VitiQoL but not on the DLQI, which is less specific to vitiligo. The same pattern was true at week 52, with results favoring Opzelura for study participants in the F-VASI175 and F-FASI90 groups on both the DLQI and VitiQoL scales, but for those in the F-VASI50 group, the advantage was less clear when the measure was DLQI.
At week 104, the F-VASI50 group showed an association with improvements in both quality of life measures, but the F-VASI75 and F-VASI90 nonresponders had quality of life gains that caught up with the responders, so the difference wasn’t clear-cut.
Gooderham and her colleagues offered several possible explanations for the week 104 results. Patients treated with Opzelura may have experienced some regimentation and been satisfied with the change even if it was short of the
F-VASI75 and F-VASI90 thresholds. They said the results may also be the result of “psychological acclimation with ongoing treatment results.” Finally, they noted the number of study participants tailed off as the study went from 24 to 52 and then 104 weeks.
Citing the first-year results, Gooderham and her colleagues say that patients with an F-VASI response to Opzelura showed consistently greater quality of life improvements than people who didn’t have an F-VASI response. Furthermore, they concluded that the greater the repigmentation (F-VASI75 and F-VASI90), the bigger the increase in the quality of life measures.
