Skip to main content
Top

03-05-2018 | Juvenile idiopathic arthritis | News

BSR 2018 in brief

More data needed on biosimilar use in JIA

print
PRINT
insite
SEARCH

This information is brought to you by medwireNews and is not sponsored by, nor a part of, the British Society for Rheumatology.

medwireNews: UK study results provide some initial insights into the use of biosimilar drugs among children and adolescents with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

“At the moment, we have little to no data available on the use of biosimilars in this indication,” said Diederik De Cock (University of Manchester, UK) in his presentation at the 2018 British Society for Rheumatology Annual Conference in Liverpool, UK.

Using data from the Biologics for Children with Rheumatic Diseases study, the researchers identified 71 patients who started using a biosimilar between 2010 and 2018, most of whom were on biosimilar infliximab.

Of these 71 patients, 63% started a biosimilar as their first biologic therapy.

“Quite remarkably, currently very few patients have been switched directly from originator product,” said De Cock, noting that only 10% of patients receiving biosimilars had switched from the originator. The remaining 27% of patients switched from another biologic due to either inefficacy or adverse events.

“The most important point to stress is that we need to have more data” on the use of biosimilars in patients with JIA, De Cock concluded.

By Claire Barnard

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group

print
PRINT