UMMS Affiliation

Department of Orthopedics and Physical Rehabilitation

Publication Date

2018-12

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Immune System Diseases | Musculoskeletal Diseases | Rheumatology | Therapeutics

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Controlled clinical studies have shown that the efficacy of tocilizumab (TCZ) monotherapy is superior to that of tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) monotherapy and comparable to that of TCZ plus methotrexate (MTX) for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This study compared the real-world effectiveness of TCZ monotherapy vs. TNFis plus MTX in US patients with RA.

METHODS: TCZ-naive patients from the Corrona RA registry with prior exposure to > /= 1 TNFi who initiated TCZ monotherapy or TNFi + MTX were included. Outcomes included mean change in Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI), achievement of low disease activity (LDA; CDAI < /= 10), achievement of modified American College of Rheumatology (mACR) 20/50 responses, and mean change in modified Health Assessment Questionnaire (mHAQ) at 6 months. Patients initiating TNFi + MTX were grouped by MTX dose ( < /= 10 mg; > 10 to < /= 15 mg; > 15 to < /= 20 mg; > 20 mg); outcomes in each group were compared with TCZ monotherapy using trimmed populations (excluding patients outside the propensity score distribution overlap).

RESULTS: Patients in all groups experienced improvement in CDAI at 6 months (mean change, - 6.9 to - 9.7), with no significant differences between the TCZ monotherapy and TNFi + MTX groups. Achievement of LDA and mACR responses at 6 months were comparable between the TCZ monotherapy and TNFi + MTX groups; overall, 26.8-38.0% of patients achieved LDA, 24.3-37.6% achieved mACR20 response and 13.2-20.8% achieved mACR50 response. The mean change in mHAQ at 6 months was - 0.1 in all groups.

CONCLUSIONS: In this real-world population of US patients with RA who had prior TNFi exposure, there was no evidence of a difference in the effectiveness of TCZ monotherapy compared with that of TNFi + MTX, regardless of MTX dose, at 6 months for improving RA disease activity.

FUNDING: Corrona, LLC. Plain language summary available for this article.

Keywords

Biological therapy, Comparative effectiveness research, Interleukin-6, Methotrexate, Monotherapy, Registries, Rheumatoid arthritis, Tocilizumab, Tumor necrosis factor inhibitors

Rights and Permissions

Copyright The Author(s) 2018. Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

DOI of Published Version

10.1007/s40744-018-0127-1

Source

Rheumatol Ther. 2018 Dec;5(2):507-523. doi: 10.1007/s40744-018-0127-1. Epub 2018 Oct 6. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Rheumatology and therapy

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

30293218

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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