medwireNews: Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who are treated with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors have a significantly lower risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE) than those given conventional DMARDs, suggests an analysis of the German RABBIT registry.
Among 11,094 patients from the registry who started treatment with a new DMARD between 2009 and 2019 following a previous inadequate response to at least one DMARD, rates of VTE were 1.1% for the 5060 patients initiating a TNF inhibitor, 0.9% for the 2534 initiating another biologic agent, and 1.1% for the 3500 initiating a conventional DMARD.
Presenting the results at the EULAR 2020 E-Congress, Anja Strangfeld (German Rheumatism Research Centre, Berlin) said that the crude incidence rates of VTE per 1000 person–years did not differ significantly among the three groups. But patients taking TNF inhibitors had a significant 47% lower risk for VTE than those taking conventional DMARDs in a propensity-score matched analysis accounting for factors such as disease duration, number of prior DMARDs, comorbidities, and glucocorticoid use.
Conversely, patients aged 65 years and older had an almost threefold higher risk for VTEs than younger patients, and those with C-reactive protein (CRP) levels of 5 mg/L or higher had an approximately twofold increased risk versus individuals with lower CRP levels.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2020 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature Group
EULAR 2020 E-Congress; 3–6 June
Ann Rheum Dis 2020; doi:10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-eular.1505