Bimekizumab was superior to placebo in achieving ACR, MDA, and PASI outcomes and had an acceptable safety profile. This meta-analysis also showed that 160mg and 320mg doses of bimekizumab were both superior to placebo in achieving these outcome measures.

In the treatment of rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs), there is a need for feasible measures of patient-reported bother (impact on life and cumulative burden) from side effects and the benefit-harm-balance. Berthelsen et al. evaluated what with RMDs considered important to know about symptomatic side effects they may experience from a new prescription drug.

Risk of composite CV endpoints combining all ischaemic CV events and heart failure were similar for individual and combined TOF doses versus TNFi. The totality of CV risk (MACE-8 plus VTE) was higher with TOF 10mg twice daily versus TNFi. Buch et al conducted a post-hoc analysis on the ORAL Surveillance trial to assess risk across extended MACE endpoints in RA patients treated with either TOF 5mg, TOF 10mg, or TNFi.

Results of this analysis by Hernández-Cruz, et al. show that infections, herpes zoster and gastrointestinal AEs in patients with RA tended to be more frequent with JAKi treatment versus TNFi. They also found that treatment persistence was similar with JAKi and TNFi in patients with RA and axSpA, and only slightly higher for TNFi in patients with PsA.

March 2024

Unadjusted time to all-cause discontinuation was significantly longer with baricitinib treatment versus TNFi (estimated median prescription survival time of 704 days versus 448 days; log-rank P<0.01). This difference increased when only comparing differences for b/tsDMARD-naïve patients treated with baricitinib versus tofacitinib.

February 2024

Patients in France who started secukinumab therapy further from the launch of secukinumab were more likely to receive it as a first- or second-line therapy than patients who started treatment shortly after its launch, and had a higher retention rate when used as a first line treatment.

Guselkumab treatment exhibited generally comparable and significant pharmacodynamic effects on IL-23/Th17–associated cytokines across participants with PsA who are biologic-naïve or have TNFi-IR. In coming to this conclusion, investigators assessed and compared immunologic differences and associations with clinical response to guselkumab in participants with active PsA who were biologic-naïve or TNFi-IR.

Effectiveness of Sequential Lines of Biologic and Targeted Small Molecule Drugs in Psoriatic Arthritis: A Systematic Review

Rheumatology (Oxford). 2024 Jan 18:keae006 doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keae006 Epub ahead of print

The authors found that there is a reduction in effectiveness of lines of bDMARDs after first-line in PsA, with inadequate data to determine response to tsDMARDs.

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This study by Cho, et al. did not find any significant differences in remission rates in South Korean patients with RA that were treated with tofacitinib versus TNFi in a real-world setting. Remission rates were significantly higher for patients naïve to both JAKi and bDMARDs treated with tofacitinib versus TNFi.

Keywords:

Therapeutic intervention during the at-risk phase of RA with abatacept is feasible, with acceptable safety profiles. However, the efficacy of intermittent administration at multiple intervals remains to be assessed.