Phototherapy can be a valid therapeutic option for patients with AD. Based on the results of this review, preference is given to UVA1 and NB-UVB. Further well-designed, adequately powered RCTs are required.

Various types of oral immunosuppressive drugs have been used over the past 10 years for the treatment of severe AD with a prominent first choice for CyA. Adverse events and ineffectiveness were frequent reasons for discontinuation. A prospective database of patients using oral immunosuppressive treatments in daily practice will give more insight in the effectiveness and safety and may help to formulate future recommendations.

Atopic dermatitis (AD) is one of the most common chronic inflammatory skin diseases. The prevalence of AD is increasing and is currently estimated at 10-20% in adults worldwide. In the majority of patients, AD can be adequately controlled with topical treatment or ultraviolet light therapy, but there is a high unmet need for effective and safe therapeutics in patients with more severe or difficult to treat AD. During the past decade, new advances in the understanding of the underlying immune pathogenesis of AD have led to the development of new, more targeted therapies. Dupilumab, a fully human monoclonal antibody targeting the interleukin (IL)-4 receptor α, thereby blocking the IL-4 and IL-13 pathway, is one of the first biologics that has been developed for AD. Dupilumab has shown promising results in phase III trials and has recently been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission for the treatment of moderate to severe AD. With the approval of dupilumab, we are entering a new era of biological therapeutics in AD management. The place of dupilumab should be established in the current treatment standards. Based on current treatment guidelines and experts' opinions in the management of AD, we have built a proposal for a treatment algorithm for systemic treatment of AD in European countries.

There is uncertainty about the risk of developing non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC), including basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD) treated with oral immunosuppressive drugs. A total of 557 patients with AD treated with these drugs in the University Medical Center Utrecht and Groningen, the Netherlands, were analysed. NMSC after oral immunosuppressive treatment was reported in 18 patients (3.2%). The standardized incidence ratio for developing SCC was 13.1 (95% confidence interval (95% CI) 6.5-19.7). Patients developing NMSC were older at the start of therapy (p<0.001) and data lock (p<0.001) compared with patients without NMSC. No significant differences were found in sex, cumulative days of oral immunosuppressive drugs and follow-up between these groups (p=0.42, p=0.88, and p=0.34, respectively). In interpreting these results it is important to include other factors, such as lack of association between treatment duration and tumour development and the long interval between treatment discontinuation and tumour development in some patients.