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During 2 days of after the chaotic rollout of the new REMS platform at the end of 2021.
On March 29, at the end of the FDA’s joint meeting of two advisory committees that addressed ways to improve the iPLEDGE program, most panelists voted to change the 19-day lockout period for patients who can become pregnant, and the requirement that every month, providers must document counseling of those who cannot get pregnant and are taking the drug for acne.
However, there was no consensus on whether there should be a lockout at all or for how long, and what an appropriate interval for counseling those who cannot get pregnant would be, if not monthly. Those voting on the questions repeatedly cited a lack of data to make well-informed decisions.
The meeting of the two panels, the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and the Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee, was held March 28-29, to discuss proposed changes to iPLEDGE requirements, to minimize the program’s burden on patients, prescribers, and pharmacies – while maintaining safe use of the highly teratogenic drug.
Lockout based on outdated reasoning
John S. Barbieri, MD, a dermatologist and epidemiologist, and director of the Advanced Acne Therapeutics Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, speaking as deputy chair of the American Academy of Dermatology Association (AADA) iPLEDGE work group, described the burden of getting the drug to patients. He was not on the panel, but spoke during the open public hearing.
“Compared to other acne medications, the time it takes to successfully go from prescribed (isotretinoin) to when the patient actually has it in their hands is 5- to 10-fold higher,” he said.
Among the barriers is the 19-day lockout period for people who can get pregnant and miss the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions. They must then wait 19 days to get a pregnancy test to clear them for receiving the medication.
Gregory Wedin, PharmD, pharmacovigilance and risk management director of Upsher-Smith Laboratories, who spoke on behalf of the Isotretinoin Products Manufacturer Group (IPMG), which manages iPLEDGE, said, “The rationale for the 19-day wait is to ensure the next confirmatory pregnancy test is completed after the most fertile period of the menstrual cycle is passed.”
Many don’t have a monthly cycle
But Dr. Barbieri said that reasoning is outdated.
“The current program’s focus on the menstrual cycle is really an antiquated approach,” he said. “Many patients do not have a monthly cycle due to medical conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, or due to [certain kinds of] contraception.”
He added, “By removing this 19-day lockout and, really, the archaic timing around the menstrual cycle in general in this program, we can simplify the program, improve it, and better align it with the real-world biology of our patients.” He added that patients are often missing the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions through no fault of their own. Speakers at the hearing also mentioned insurance hassles and ordering delays.
Communication with IPMG
Ilona Frieden, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and outgoing chair of the AADA iPLEDGE work group, cited difficulty in working with IPMG on modifications as another barrier. She also spoke during the open public hearing.
“Despite many, many attempts to work with the IPMG, we are not aware of any organizational structure or key leaders to communicate with. Instead we have been given repeatedly a generic email address for trying to establish a working relationship and we believe this may explain the inaction of the IPMG since our proposals 4 years ago in 2019.”
Among those proposals, she said, were allowing telemedicine visits as part of the iPLEDGE REMS program and reducing counseling attestation to every 6 months instead of monthly for those who cannot become pregnant.
She pointed to the chaotic rollout of modifications to the iPLEDGE program on a new website at the end of 2021.
In 2021, she said, “despite 6 months of notification, no prescriber input was solicited before revamping the website. This lack of transparency and accountability has been a major hurdle in improving iPLEDGE.”
Dr. Barbieri called the rollout “a debacle” that could have been mitigated with communication with IPMG. “We warned about every issue that happened and talked about ways to mitigate it and were largely ignored,” he said.
“By including dermatologists and key stakeholders in these discussions, as we move forward with changes to improve this program, we can make sure that it’s patient-centered.”
IPMG did not address the specific complaints about the working relationship with the AADA workgroup at the meeting.
Monthly attestation for counseling patients who cannot get pregnant
Dr. Barbieri said the monthly requirement to counsel patients who cannot get pregnant and document that counseling unfairly burdens clinicians and patients. “We’re essentially asking patients to come in monthly just to tell them not to share their drugs [or] donate blood,” he said.
Ken Katz, MD, MSc, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, was among the panel members voting not to continue the 19-day lockout.
“I think this places an unduly high burden physically and psychologically on our patients. It seems arbitrary,” he said. “Likely we will miss some pregnancies; we are missing some already. But the burden is not matched by the benefit.”
IPMG representative Dr. Wedin, said, “while we cannot support eliminating or extending the confirmation interval to a year, the [iPLEDGE] sponsors are agreeable [to] a 120-day confirmation interval.”
He said that while an extension to 120 days would reduce burden on prescribers, it comes with the risk in reducing oversight by a certified iPLEDGE prescriber and potentially increasing the risk for drug sharing.
“A patient may be more likely to share their drug with another person the further along with therapy they get as their condition improves,” Dr. Wedin said.
Home pregnancy testing
The advisory groups were also tasked with discussing whether home pregnancy tests, allowed during the COVID-19 public health emergency, should continue to be allowed. Most committee members and those in the public hearing who spoke on the issue agreed that home tests should continue in an effort to increase access and decrease burden.
During the pandemic, iPLEDGE rules have been relaxed from having a pregnancy test done only at a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments–certified laboratory.
Lindsey Crist, PharmD, a risk management analyst at the FDA, who presented the FDA review committee’s analysis, said that the FDA’s review committee recommends ending the allowance of home tests, citing insufficient data on use and the discovery of instances of falsification of pregnancy tests.
“One study at an academic medical center reviewed the medical records of 89 patients who used home pregnancy tests while taking isotretinoin during the public health emergency. It found that 15.7% submitted falsified pregnancy test results,” Dr. Crist said.
Dr. Crist added, however, that the review committee recommends allowing the tests to be done in a provider’s office as an alternative.
Workaround to avoid falsification
Advisory committee member Brian P. Green, DO, associate professor of dermatology at Penn State University, Hershey, Pa., spoke in support of home pregnancy tests.
“What we have people do for telemedicine is take the stick, write their name, write the date on it, and send a picture of that the same day as their visit,” he said. “That way we have the pregnancy test the same day. Allowing this to continue to happen at home is important. Bringing people in is burdensome and costly.”
Emmy Graber, MD, a dermatologist who practices in Boston, and a director of the American Acne and Rosacea Society (AARS), relayed an example of the burden for a patient using isotretinoin who lives 1.5 hours away from the dermatology office. She is able to meet the requirements of iPLEDGE only through telehealth.
“Home pregnancy tests are highly sensitive, equal to the ones done in CLIA-certified labs, and highly accurate when interpreted by a dermatology provider,” said Dr. Graber, who spoke on behalf of the AARS during the open public hearing.
“Notably, CLIA [Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments] certification is not required by other REMS programs” for teratogenic drugs, she added.
Dr. Graber said it’s important to note that in the time the pandemic exceptions have been made for isotretinoin patients, “there has been no reported spike in pregnancy in the past three years.
“We do have some data to show that it is not imposing additional harms,” she said.
Suggestions for improvement
At the end of the hearing, advisory committee members were asked to propose improvements to the iPLEDGE REMS program.
Dr. Green advocated for the addition of an iPLEDGE mobile app.
“Most people go to their phones rather than their computers, particularly teenagers and younger people,” he noted.
Advisory committee member Megha M. Tollefson, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatric and adolescent medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., echoed the need for an iPLEDGE app.
The young patients getting isotretinoin “don’t respond to email, they don’t necessarily go onto web pages. If we’re going to be as effective as possible, it’s going to have to be through an app-based system.”
Dr. Tollefson said she would like to see patient counseling standardized through the app. “I think there’s a lot of variability in what counseling is given when it’s left to the individual prescriber or practice,” she said.
Exceptions for long-acting contraceptives?
Advisory committee member Abbey B. Berenson, MD, PhD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said that patients taking long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) may need to be considered differently when deciding the intervals for attestation or whether to have a lockout period.
“LARC methods’ rate of failure is extremely low,” she said. “While it is true, as it has been pointed out, that all methods can fail, when they’re over 99% effective, I think that we can treat those methods differently than we treat methods such as birth control pills or abstinence that fail far more often. That is one way we could minimize burden on the providers and the patients.”
She also suggested using members of the health care team other than physicians to complete counseling, such as a nurse or pharmacist.
Prescriptions for emergency contraception
Advisory committee member Sascha Dublin, MD, PhD, senior scientific investigator for Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, said most patients taking the drug who can get pregnant should get a prescription for emergency contraception at the time of the first isotretinoin prescription.
“They don’t have to buy it, but to make it available at the very beginning sets the expectation that it would be good to have in your medicine cabinet, particularly if the [contraception] choice is abstinence or birth control pills.”
Dr. Dublin also called for better transparency surrounding the role of IPMG.
She said IPMG should be expected to collect data in a way that allows examination of health disparities, including by race and ethnicity and insurance status. Dr. Dublin added that she was concerned about the poor communication between dermatological societies and IPMG.
“The FDA should really require that IPMG hold periodic, regularly scheduled stakeholder forums,” she said. “There has to be a mechanism in place for IPMG to listen to those concerns in real time and respond.”
The advisory committees’ recommendations to the FDA are nonbinding, but the FDA generally follows the recommendations of advisory panels.
During 2 days of after the chaotic rollout of the new REMS platform at the end of 2021.
On March 29, at the end of the FDA’s joint meeting of two advisory committees that addressed ways to improve the iPLEDGE program, most panelists voted to change the 19-day lockout period for patients who can become pregnant, and the requirement that every month, providers must document counseling of those who cannot get pregnant and are taking the drug for acne.
However, there was no consensus on whether there should be a lockout at all or for how long, and what an appropriate interval for counseling those who cannot get pregnant would be, if not monthly. Those voting on the questions repeatedly cited a lack of data to make well-informed decisions.
The meeting of the two panels, the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and the Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee, was held March 28-29, to discuss proposed changes to iPLEDGE requirements, to minimize the program’s burden on patients, prescribers, and pharmacies – while maintaining safe use of the highly teratogenic drug.
Lockout based on outdated reasoning
John S. Barbieri, MD, a dermatologist and epidemiologist, and director of the Advanced Acne Therapeutics Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, speaking as deputy chair of the American Academy of Dermatology Association (AADA) iPLEDGE work group, described the burden of getting the drug to patients. He was not on the panel, but spoke during the open public hearing.
“Compared to other acne medications, the time it takes to successfully go from prescribed (isotretinoin) to when the patient actually has it in their hands is 5- to 10-fold higher,” he said.
Among the barriers is the 19-day lockout period for people who can get pregnant and miss the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions. They must then wait 19 days to get a pregnancy test to clear them for receiving the medication.
Gregory Wedin, PharmD, pharmacovigilance and risk management director of Upsher-Smith Laboratories, who spoke on behalf of the Isotretinoin Products Manufacturer Group (IPMG), which manages iPLEDGE, said, “The rationale for the 19-day wait is to ensure the next confirmatory pregnancy test is completed after the most fertile period of the menstrual cycle is passed.”
Many don’t have a monthly cycle
But Dr. Barbieri said that reasoning is outdated.
“The current program’s focus on the menstrual cycle is really an antiquated approach,” he said. “Many patients do not have a monthly cycle due to medical conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, or due to [certain kinds of] contraception.”
He added, “By removing this 19-day lockout and, really, the archaic timing around the menstrual cycle in general in this program, we can simplify the program, improve it, and better align it with the real-world biology of our patients.” He added that patients are often missing the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions through no fault of their own. Speakers at the hearing also mentioned insurance hassles and ordering delays.
Communication with IPMG
Ilona Frieden, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and outgoing chair of the AADA iPLEDGE work group, cited difficulty in working with IPMG on modifications as another barrier. She also spoke during the open public hearing.
“Despite many, many attempts to work with the IPMG, we are not aware of any organizational structure or key leaders to communicate with. Instead we have been given repeatedly a generic email address for trying to establish a working relationship and we believe this may explain the inaction of the IPMG since our proposals 4 years ago in 2019.”
Among those proposals, she said, were allowing telemedicine visits as part of the iPLEDGE REMS program and reducing counseling attestation to every 6 months instead of monthly for those who cannot become pregnant.
She pointed to the chaotic rollout of modifications to the iPLEDGE program on a new website at the end of 2021.
In 2021, she said, “despite 6 months of notification, no prescriber input was solicited before revamping the website. This lack of transparency and accountability has been a major hurdle in improving iPLEDGE.”
Dr. Barbieri called the rollout “a debacle” that could have been mitigated with communication with IPMG. “We warned about every issue that happened and talked about ways to mitigate it and were largely ignored,” he said.
“By including dermatologists and key stakeholders in these discussions, as we move forward with changes to improve this program, we can make sure that it’s patient-centered.”
IPMG did not address the specific complaints about the working relationship with the AADA workgroup at the meeting.
Monthly attestation for counseling patients who cannot get pregnant
Dr. Barbieri said the monthly requirement to counsel patients who cannot get pregnant and document that counseling unfairly burdens clinicians and patients. “We’re essentially asking patients to come in monthly just to tell them not to share their drugs [or] donate blood,” he said.
Ken Katz, MD, MSc, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, was among the panel members voting not to continue the 19-day lockout.
“I think this places an unduly high burden physically and psychologically on our patients. It seems arbitrary,” he said. “Likely we will miss some pregnancies; we are missing some already. But the burden is not matched by the benefit.”
IPMG representative Dr. Wedin, said, “while we cannot support eliminating or extending the confirmation interval to a year, the [iPLEDGE] sponsors are agreeable [to] a 120-day confirmation interval.”
He said that while an extension to 120 days would reduce burden on prescribers, it comes with the risk in reducing oversight by a certified iPLEDGE prescriber and potentially increasing the risk for drug sharing.
“A patient may be more likely to share their drug with another person the further along with therapy they get as their condition improves,” Dr. Wedin said.
Home pregnancy testing
The advisory groups were also tasked with discussing whether home pregnancy tests, allowed during the COVID-19 public health emergency, should continue to be allowed. Most committee members and those in the public hearing who spoke on the issue agreed that home tests should continue in an effort to increase access and decrease burden.
During the pandemic, iPLEDGE rules have been relaxed from having a pregnancy test done only at a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments–certified laboratory.
Lindsey Crist, PharmD, a risk management analyst at the FDA, who presented the FDA review committee’s analysis, said that the FDA’s review committee recommends ending the allowance of home tests, citing insufficient data on use and the discovery of instances of falsification of pregnancy tests.
“One study at an academic medical center reviewed the medical records of 89 patients who used home pregnancy tests while taking isotretinoin during the public health emergency. It found that 15.7% submitted falsified pregnancy test results,” Dr. Crist said.
Dr. Crist added, however, that the review committee recommends allowing the tests to be done in a provider’s office as an alternative.
Workaround to avoid falsification
Advisory committee member Brian P. Green, DO, associate professor of dermatology at Penn State University, Hershey, Pa., spoke in support of home pregnancy tests.
“What we have people do for telemedicine is take the stick, write their name, write the date on it, and send a picture of that the same day as their visit,” he said. “That way we have the pregnancy test the same day. Allowing this to continue to happen at home is important. Bringing people in is burdensome and costly.”
Emmy Graber, MD, a dermatologist who practices in Boston, and a director of the American Acne and Rosacea Society (AARS), relayed an example of the burden for a patient using isotretinoin who lives 1.5 hours away from the dermatology office. She is able to meet the requirements of iPLEDGE only through telehealth.
“Home pregnancy tests are highly sensitive, equal to the ones done in CLIA-certified labs, and highly accurate when interpreted by a dermatology provider,” said Dr. Graber, who spoke on behalf of the AARS during the open public hearing.
“Notably, CLIA [Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments] certification is not required by other REMS programs” for teratogenic drugs, she added.
Dr. Graber said it’s important to note that in the time the pandemic exceptions have been made for isotretinoin patients, “there has been no reported spike in pregnancy in the past three years.
“We do have some data to show that it is not imposing additional harms,” she said.
Suggestions for improvement
At the end of the hearing, advisory committee members were asked to propose improvements to the iPLEDGE REMS program.
Dr. Green advocated for the addition of an iPLEDGE mobile app.
“Most people go to their phones rather than their computers, particularly teenagers and younger people,” he noted.
Advisory committee member Megha M. Tollefson, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatric and adolescent medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., echoed the need for an iPLEDGE app.
The young patients getting isotretinoin “don’t respond to email, they don’t necessarily go onto web pages. If we’re going to be as effective as possible, it’s going to have to be through an app-based system.”
Dr. Tollefson said she would like to see patient counseling standardized through the app. “I think there’s a lot of variability in what counseling is given when it’s left to the individual prescriber or practice,” she said.
Exceptions for long-acting contraceptives?
Advisory committee member Abbey B. Berenson, MD, PhD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said that patients taking long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) may need to be considered differently when deciding the intervals for attestation or whether to have a lockout period.
“LARC methods’ rate of failure is extremely low,” she said. “While it is true, as it has been pointed out, that all methods can fail, when they’re over 99% effective, I think that we can treat those methods differently than we treat methods such as birth control pills or abstinence that fail far more often. That is one way we could minimize burden on the providers and the patients.”
She also suggested using members of the health care team other than physicians to complete counseling, such as a nurse or pharmacist.
Prescriptions for emergency contraception
Advisory committee member Sascha Dublin, MD, PhD, senior scientific investigator for Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, said most patients taking the drug who can get pregnant should get a prescription for emergency contraception at the time of the first isotretinoin prescription.
“They don’t have to buy it, but to make it available at the very beginning sets the expectation that it would be good to have in your medicine cabinet, particularly if the [contraception] choice is abstinence or birth control pills.”
Dr. Dublin also called for better transparency surrounding the role of IPMG.
She said IPMG should be expected to collect data in a way that allows examination of health disparities, including by race and ethnicity and insurance status. Dr. Dublin added that she was concerned about the poor communication between dermatological societies and IPMG.
“The FDA should really require that IPMG hold periodic, regularly scheduled stakeholder forums,” she said. “There has to be a mechanism in place for IPMG to listen to those concerns in real time and respond.”
The advisory committees’ recommendations to the FDA are nonbinding, but the FDA generally follows the recommendations of advisory panels.
During 2 days of after the chaotic rollout of the new REMS platform at the end of 2021.
On March 29, at the end of the FDA’s joint meeting of two advisory committees that addressed ways to improve the iPLEDGE program, most panelists voted to change the 19-day lockout period for patients who can become pregnant, and the requirement that every month, providers must document counseling of those who cannot get pregnant and are taking the drug for acne.
However, there was no consensus on whether there should be a lockout at all or for how long, and what an appropriate interval for counseling those who cannot get pregnant would be, if not monthly. Those voting on the questions repeatedly cited a lack of data to make well-informed decisions.
The meeting of the two panels, the FDA’s Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and the Dermatologic and Ophthalmic Drugs Advisory Committee, was held March 28-29, to discuss proposed changes to iPLEDGE requirements, to minimize the program’s burden on patients, prescribers, and pharmacies – while maintaining safe use of the highly teratogenic drug.
Lockout based on outdated reasoning
John S. Barbieri, MD, a dermatologist and epidemiologist, and director of the Advanced Acne Therapeutics Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, speaking as deputy chair of the American Academy of Dermatology Association (AADA) iPLEDGE work group, described the burden of getting the drug to patients. He was not on the panel, but spoke during the open public hearing.
“Compared to other acne medications, the time it takes to successfully go from prescribed (isotretinoin) to when the patient actually has it in their hands is 5- to 10-fold higher,” he said.
Among the barriers is the 19-day lockout period for people who can get pregnant and miss the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions. They must then wait 19 days to get a pregnancy test to clear them for receiving the medication.
Gregory Wedin, PharmD, pharmacovigilance and risk management director of Upsher-Smith Laboratories, who spoke on behalf of the Isotretinoin Products Manufacturer Group (IPMG), which manages iPLEDGE, said, “The rationale for the 19-day wait is to ensure the next confirmatory pregnancy test is completed after the most fertile period of the menstrual cycle is passed.”
Many don’t have a monthly cycle
But Dr. Barbieri said that reasoning is outdated.
“The current program’s focus on the menstrual cycle is really an antiquated approach,” he said. “Many patients do not have a monthly cycle due to medical conditions like polycystic ovarian syndrome, or due to [certain kinds of] contraception.”
He added, “By removing this 19-day lockout and, really, the archaic timing around the menstrual cycle in general in this program, we can simplify the program, improve it, and better align it with the real-world biology of our patients.” He added that patients are often missing the 7-day window for picking up their prescriptions through no fault of their own. Speakers at the hearing also mentioned insurance hassles and ordering delays.
Communication with IPMG
Ilona Frieden, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, and outgoing chair of the AADA iPLEDGE work group, cited difficulty in working with IPMG on modifications as another barrier. She also spoke during the open public hearing.
“Despite many, many attempts to work with the IPMG, we are not aware of any organizational structure or key leaders to communicate with. Instead we have been given repeatedly a generic email address for trying to establish a working relationship and we believe this may explain the inaction of the IPMG since our proposals 4 years ago in 2019.”
Among those proposals, she said, were allowing telemedicine visits as part of the iPLEDGE REMS program and reducing counseling attestation to every 6 months instead of monthly for those who cannot become pregnant.
She pointed to the chaotic rollout of modifications to the iPLEDGE program on a new website at the end of 2021.
In 2021, she said, “despite 6 months of notification, no prescriber input was solicited before revamping the website. This lack of transparency and accountability has been a major hurdle in improving iPLEDGE.”
Dr. Barbieri called the rollout “a debacle” that could have been mitigated with communication with IPMG. “We warned about every issue that happened and talked about ways to mitigate it and were largely ignored,” he said.
“By including dermatologists and key stakeholders in these discussions, as we move forward with changes to improve this program, we can make sure that it’s patient-centered.”
IPMG did not address the specific complaints about the working relationship with the AADA workgroup at the meeting.
Monthly attestation for counseling patients who cannot get pregnant
Dr. Barbieri said the monthly requirement to counsel patients who cannot get pregnant and document that counseling unfairly burdens clinicians and patients. “We’re essentially asking patients to come in monthly just to tell them not to share their drugs [or] donate blood,” he said.
Ken Katz, MD, MSc, a dermatologist at Kaiser Permanente in San Francisco, was among the panel members voting not to continue the 19-day lockout.
“I think this places an unduly high burden physically and psychologically on our patients. It seems arbitrary,” he said. “Likely we will miss some pregnancies; we are missing some already. But the burden is not matched by the benefit.”
IPMG representative Dr. Wedin, said, “while we cannot support eliminating or extending the confirmation interval to a year, the [iPLEDGE] sponsors are agreeable [to] a 120-day confirmation interval.”
He said that while an extension to 120 days would reduce burden on prescribers, it comes with the risk in reducing oversight by a certified iPLEDGE prescriber and potentially increasing the risk for drug sharing.
“A patient may be more likely to share their drug with another person the further along with therapy they get as their condition improves,” Dr. Wedin said.
Home pregnancy testing
The advisory groups were also tasked with discussing whether home pregnancy tests, allowed during the COVID-19 public health emergency, should continue to be allowed. Most committee members and those in the public hearing who spoke on the issue agreed that home tests should continue in an effort to increase access and decrease burden.
During the pandemic, iPLEDGE rules have been relaxed from having a pregnancy test done only at a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments–certified laboratory.
Lindsey Crist, PharmD, a risk management analyst at the FDA, who presented the FDA review committee’s analysis, said that the FDA’s review committee recommends ending the allowance of home tests, citing insufficient data on use and the discovery of instances of falsification of pregnancy tests.
“One study at an academic medical center reviewed the medical records of 89 patients who used home pregnancy tests while taking isotretinoin during the public health emergency. It found that 15.7% submitted falsified pregnancy test results,” Dr. Crist said.
Dr. Crist added, however, that the review committee recommends allowing the tests to be done in a provider’s office as an alternative.
Workaround to avoid falsification
Advisory committee member Brian P. Green, DO, associate professor of dermatology at Penn State University, Hershey, Pa., spoke in support of home pregnancy tests.
“What we have people do for telemedicine is take the stick, write their name, write the date on it, and send a picture of that the same day as their visit,” he said. “That way we have the pregnancy test the same day. Allowing this to continue to happen at home is important. Bringing people in is burdensome and costly.”
Emmy Graber, MD, a dermatologist who practices in Boston, and a director of the American Acne and Rosacea Society (AARS), relayed an example of the burden for a patient using isotretinoin who lives 1.5 hours away from the dermatology office. She is able to meet the requirements of iPLEDGE only through telehealth.
“Home pregnancy tests are highly sensitive, equal to the ones done in CLIA-certified labs, and highly accurate when interpreted by a dermatology provider,” said Dr. Graber, who spoke on behalf of the AARS during the open public hearing.
“Notably, CLIA [Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments] certification is not required by other REMS programs” for teratogenic drugs, she added.
Dr. Graber said it’s important to note that in the time the pandemic exceptions have been made for isotretinoin patients, “there has been no reported spike in pregnancy in the past three years.
“We do have some data to show that it is not imposing additional harms,” she said.
Suggestions for improvement
At the end of the hearing, advisory committee members were asked to propose improvements to the iPLEDGE REMS program.
Dr. Green advocated for the addition of an iPLEDGE mobile app.
“Most people go to their phones rather than their computers, particularly teenagers and younger people,” he noted.
Advisory committee member Megha M. Tollefson, MD, professor of dermatology and pediatric and adolescent medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., echoed the need for an iPLEDGE app.
The young patients getting isotretinoin “don’t respond to email, they don’t necessarily go onto web pages. If we’re going to be as effective as possible, it’s going to have to be through an app-based system.”
Dr. Tollefson said she would like to see patient counseling standardized through the app. “I think there’s a lot of variability in what counseling is given when it’s left to the individual prescriber or practice,” she said.
Exceptions for long-acting contraceptives?
Advisory committee member Abbey B. Berenson, MD, PhD, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, said that patients taking long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) may need to be considered differently when deciding the intervals for attestation or whether to have a lockout period.
“LARC methods’ rate of failure is extremely low,” she said. “While it is true, as it has been pointed out, that all methods can fail, when they’re over 99% effective, I think that we can treat those methods differently than we treat methods such as birth control pills or abstinence that fail far more often. That is one way we could minimize burden on the providers and the patients.”
She also suggested using members of the health care team other than physicians to complete counseling, such as a nurse or pharmacist.
Prescriptions for emergency contraception
Advisory committee member Sascha Dublin, MD, PhD, senior scientific investigator for Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle, said most patients taking the drug who can get pregnant should get a prescription for emergency contraception at the time of the first isotretinoin prescription.
“They don’t have to buy it, but to make it available at the very beginning sets the expectation that it would be good to have in your medicine cabinet, particularly if the [contraception] choice is abstinence or birth control pills.”
Dr. Dublin also called for better transparency surrounding the role of IPMG.
She said IPMG should be expected to collect data in a way that allows examination of health disparities, including by race and ethnicity and insurance status. Dr. Dublin added that she was concerned about the poor communication between dermatological societies and IPMG.
“The FDA should really require that IPMG hold periodic, regularly scheduled stakeholder forums,” she said. “There has to be a mechanism in place for IPMG to listen to those concerns in real time and respond.”
The advisory committees’ recommendations to the FDA are nonbinding, but the FDA generally follows the recommendations of advisory panels.