In the latest study by Brunner, et al. secukinumab demonstrated efficacy and safety in the JIA categories of ERA and JPsA. This phase 3 study aimed to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of secukinumab in patients with active ERA and JPsA.

Phase 3 trial of olokizumab, a direct inhibitor of the IL-6 ligand, demonstrates superiority to placebo with respect to an ACR20 response at week 12 and noninferiority to adalimumab (all combined with methotrexate), in patients with RA.

Post hoc analysis findings provide the first data evaluating the importance of treatment order with JAKinib vs TNFi as initial therapy, suggesting that a JAKinib first strategy leads to more rapid improvements in treatment outcomes following csDMARD failure.

Post hoc analysis, using the final dataset from ORAL Surveillance, reveals a higher risk of non-serious infections and herpes zoster with tofacitinib vs TNFi, and higher risk of serious infection events with tofacitinib 10 mg BID versus TNFi, particularly in patients aged ≥65 years.

Blocking the IL-6R is a major therapeutic advance for many diseases in adults and children. Updated consensus statement provides guidance to rheumatologists and other experts, as well as patients and administrators, on managing patients with the use of drugs blocking the IL-6 pathway.

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July 2022

Van der Heijde et al., carried out a study to show whether upadacitinib offers an effective treatment option for bDMARD-naïve and bDMARD-IR patients with active AS. Their results indicated that upadacitinib 15 mg significantly improved the signs and symptoms of active AS. The treatment was well tolerated for 14 weeks in bDMARD-IR patients, consistent with results observed in the upadacitinib AS bDMARD-naïve study.

Baseline disease activity, as measured by cDAPSA, predicts the achievement of treatment targets in DMARD-naïve patients post- apremilast treatment. To come to this conclusion Mease, et al.  analysed data from the PALACE 4 clinical trial which investigated apremilast in DMARD-naïve patients. 175 patients receiving 30mg apremilast from baseline with cDAPSA data available, were analysed.

Retrospective, longitudinal, population-based study shows that despite an overall higher incidence of hospitalised infection (HI) in both elderly and older elderly patients compared to young patients, the risks of HI in patients exposed to targeted therapy versus MTX is not significantly increased.

Observational study of data, from large international collective of registers, finds similar overall drug retention rates between RA treatment groups.

June 2022

In this study Mease, et al. aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of deucravacitinib in patients with active PsA. Treatment with the selective TYK2i deucravacitinib was well tolerated and resulted in greater improvements than placebo in ACR-20 as well as Multiplicity-controlled secondary endpoints and other exploratory efficacy measures in patients.