Real-world study of hidradenitis suppurativa: skin lesions and pain are associated with Hurley Stage in TARGET-DERM HS.

Challenge

HS disease burden is widely recognized but the specific associations between objective lesion counts—nodules, abscesses, fistulas—and patient-reported pain, odor, and drainage across Hurley stages had not been established in a large real-world North American registry, limiting the use of clinician-assessed endpoints as surrogates for patient experience.

Solution

The TARGET-DERM HS registry was analyzed to characterize HS-PGA severity, lesion counts, and patient-reported symptom assessments (pain, drainage, odor) stratified by Hurley stage, providing the first large real-world characterization of disease burden across the HS severity spectrum.

Impact

Establishing that objective lesion counts and patient-reported symptoms both scale significantly with Hurley staging validates Hurley stage as a meaningful disease severity stratification tool for HS clinical trials and supports the use of lesion-count endpoints as surrogates for patient-experienced burden in drug development.