Effects of GLP-1 Agonists on Patients with Hidradenitis Suppurativa: A Systematic Review.

This systematic review examined the effects of GLP-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1 RAs) on patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS), a chronic, painful inflammatory skin condition often associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome. Researchers searched Embase and PubMed, screening 300 papers and ultimately including 10 studies in the final analysis. The review found that HS patients using GLP-1 RAs tended to experience improvements in clinical course, including reductions in pain and suppuration, as well as improvements in quality of life and mental health. Cardiovascular risk markers also appeared to improve. Notably, inflammatory laboratory parameters did not show statistically significant changes. Higher drug doses were more frequently associated with clinical improvement, while reductions in weight or BMI did not consistently correlate with improvements in Hurley staging, pain, or depression scores. The authors suggest this raises the possibility that GLP-1 RAs may act through direct anti-inflammatory mechanisms beyond weight loss alone, though they acknowledge this remains unresolved. Key limitations include the small number of included studies (10), likely heterogeneous study designs across the included papers, and the inability to establish causality or rule out confounding. The authors call for further dedicated studies to clarify the mechanism of benefit.

Why this grade: Although this is a systematic review of human studies, only 10 papers met inclusion criteria, the underlying studies are likely small and heterogeneous, and no meta-analysis was performed, limiting the strength of conclusions that can be drawn.