Psoriasis cannot be cured as yet. The therapeutic objective is to decrease the disease's symptoms to the greatest possible extent and to improve the patient's quality of life so that he/she is able to lead a normal life, whereby the choice of treatment depends on the disease's extent, degree of severity, the patient's age, sex and circumstances. Since psoriasis proceeds differently and not every drug works equally well in every patient, we need to develop individual therapeutic strategies.
 
The following basically applies:

• in mild to moderately-severe psoriatic forms it is often sufficient to treat the skin changes locally by, for instance by applying ointments (topical therapy)
   
• in more severe psoriatic forms or forms not responding to topical therapy alone, phototherapy (radiation with UV light) and drugs for ingestion are used, in addition to procedures such as climatic therapy or balneotherapy and psychosocial therapy.

Standard therapies

The basis of psoriatic therapy consists of applying ointments without active ingredients or ointments and creams with active ingredients such as urea or salicylic acid on the flaking skin. 

If topical therapy alone does not help - which is usually the case in moderately-severe to severe psoriasis - the next treatment stage is conventional systemic therapy, in which patients take drugs that inhibit the activity of the immune system as a whole.