Olokizumab versus Placebo or Adalimumab in Rheumatoid Arthritis

N Engl J Med. 2022;387(8):715–726. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2201302

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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This study suggested that COMBIO (combination of targeted therapy) appears to be effective in achieving significant and mild-to-moderate improvement in half and a quarter of patients with IMIDs, respectively. This was an ambispective study of a French cohort of patients from gastroenterology, rheumatology, and dermatology.

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This Phase 3 study by Strober, et al. reports deucravacitinib superiority to placebo and apremilast in patients with PsO. The authors found that deucravacitinib had significantly higher rates of PASI 75 and sPGA achievement than placebo and deucravacitinib.

August 2022

In the latest study by Curtis, et al. guselkumab treatment regimens improved general HRQoL as measured by the EQ-5D-5L Index and EQ-VAS. In reaching this conclusion investigators aimed to determine the minimal important difference for both instruments and to understand the associations between patient-reported EQ-5D-5L Index and EQ-VAS scores as well as key PsA clinical features.

Bimekizumab is associated with sustained, long-term efficacy in r-axSpA patinets across three years of treatment. In coming to this conclusion, investigators sought to assess the long-term safety, tolerability, and efficacy of bimekizumab in active r-axSpA.

Herpes zoster (HZ) risk is significantly increased in seropositive RA patients with a history of HZ after the initiation of bDMARDs or tsDMARD. It is now well known that the incidence and recurrence of HZ are quite common in patients with RA in real-world clinical settings, yet there is limited evidence regarding bDMARD-dependent HZ risk among patients with a history of HZ prior to bDMARD use.