**2.3 Active ingredients**

Alongside moisturisers, topical therapeutic products for psoriasis that contain active ingredients can also utilise both the fundamental (Section 2.1) and specialty (Section 2.2) ingredients to compliment the active component of the product or provide additional skin conditioning benefits. Common examples of actives indicated for the management of psoriasis include corticosteroids (e.g., hydrocortisone, clobetasone butyrate, mometasone furoate) (Section 2.3.1), tar-based actives (e.g., coal tar, pine tar) (Section 2.3.2) and keratolytics (e.g., salicylic acid) (Section 2.3.3). While these active ingredients are included to treat specific symptoms or characteristics of psoriasis such as inflammation, itch and plaque build-up, the use of a moisturising base can help to dramatically improve patient outcomes [6, 35]. While non-active moisturisers containing only fundamental ingredients are an important adjuvant therapy of classical psoriasis treatment modalities and used as supportive treatment in relapse-free phases [6, 35, 50], a moisturising base containing a topical corticosteroid will be able to not only manage the inflammation associated with psoriasis but also reduce the dryness and itch, and the accompanying scratch response that can significantly worsen disease morbidity [86].
