medwireNews: Treatment with abatacept is associated with improvements in patient-reported outcomes (PROs) among individuals with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), study findings suggest.
In an analysis of data from the ASTRAEA trial, Evo Alemao (Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, USA) and co-investigators found that the 213 patients who were randomly assigned to receive abatacept experienced significantly greater improvements in Short Form-36 physical component summary, physical functioning, bodily pain, and vitality scores from baseline to week 16 and week 24 than their 211 counterparts who received placebo.
Among abatacept-treated patients, improvements in PROs from baseline to week 16 were “generally larger” in those who were tumor necrosis factor inhibitor-naïve compared with those who had prior exposure, report the researchers in Arthritis Research & Therapy.
Improvements in PROs across both treatment groups were also numerically higher among patients with C-reactive protein (CRP) levels above the upper limit of normal compared with patients with lower levels.
These findings “support previous results that abatacept may be particularly effective in certain subpopulations of patients,” and “suggest that baseline CRP should be taken into consideration when evaluating the clinical efficacy of different treatments,” conclude Alemao and team.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group
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