UMMS Affiliation

Department of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology

Publication Date

2020-06-06

Document Type

Article

Disciplines

Epidemiology | Health Services Research | Immune System Diseases | Musculoskeletal Diseases | Pathological Conditions, Signs and Symptoms | Rheumatology

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: To study whether there is an association between body mass index (BMI) category and survival of various tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients in a real-life longitudinal international registry.

METHODS: Data from 5230 patients with RA starting treatment with any TNFi were selected from the METEOR registry. Patients were divided into six BMI categories: 3.7% underweight, BMI < 18.5 kg/m(2); 46% normal weight, BMI 18.5-25 kg/m(2); 32% pre-obesity, BMI 25-30 kg/m(2); 13% obesity class I, BMI 30-35 kg/m(2); 3.4% obesity class II, BMI 35-40 kg/m(2); and 1.6% obesity class III, BMI > 40 kg/m(2). Time on treatment in the different BMI categories was compared for all TNFi combined and for the infliximab, adalimumab and etanercept separately, using Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression analyses. Cox regression analyses were adjusted for potential confounders, with follow-up censored at 5000 days.

RESULTS: Patients in obesity class II (HR 1.28, 95% CI 1.06 to 1.54) and III (HR 1.67, 95% CI 1.29 to 2.18) and underweight patients (HR 1.30, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.58) showed statistically significantly shorter TNFi survival than normal weight patients. The effect in underweight patients was strongest for infliximab (HR 1.82, 95% CI 1.20 to 2.76), the effect in overweight patients was strongest for infliximab (category II (HR 1.49, 95% CI 0.98 to 2.26); category III (HR 1.46, 95% CI 0.79 to 2.71)) and etanercept (category II (HR 1.27 95% CI 0.98 to 1.65); category III (HR 1.79, 95% CI 1.25 to 2.55)). No significant effect modification from reported pain was found.

CONCLUSION: Both underweight and overweight patients discontinued TNFi treatment earlier than normal weight patients, without evidence of reported pain as the main determinant. It remains uncertain what determines TNFi survival in individual patients.

Keywords

Arthritis, Autoimmune diseases, DMARDs (biologic), DMARDs (synthetic), Disease activity, Rheumatoid arthritis

Rights and Permissions

© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

DOI of Published Version

10.1136/rmdopen-2020-001203

Source

Bergstra SA, Allaart CF, Vega-Morales D, De Buck M, Murphy E, Salomon Escoto K, Huizinga TWJ. Body mass index and treatment survival in patients with RA starting treatment with TNFα-inhibitors: long-term follow-up in the real-life METEOR registry. RMD Open. 2020 Jun;6(2):e001203. doi: 10.1136/rmdopen-2020-001203. PMID: 32506054; PMCID: PMC7299513. Link to article on publisher's site

Journal/Book/Conference Title

RMD open

Related Resources

Link to Article in PubMed

PubMed ID

32506054

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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