medwireNews: The 5-year results from the phase 3 FUTURE 1 trial suggest that the interleukin (IL)-17A inhibitor secukinumab has long-term benefits and continues to be well tolerated in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA).
Philip Mease (Swedish Medical Center and University of Washington, Seattle, USA) and co-investigators explain that following the primary 2-year trial – in which secukinumab was found to provide “rapid and significant improvements in all key clinical manifestations of PsA” – patients entered an extension study and continued to receive secukinumab 75 mg or 150 mg every 4 weeks with dose escalation permitted from week 156 onwards.
They report in ACR Open Rheumatology that ACR20, 50, and 70 response rates among the 193 patients given the 150 mg dose of secukinumab throughout the study were “sustained through 5 years,” with rates of 67.9%, 52.7%, and 37.4%, respectively. Similar results were obtained when the analysis included patients who were originally assigned to placebo in FUTURE 1 and switched to secukinumab 150 mg at week 16 or 24, and the findings were consistent regardless of prior tumor necrosis factor inhibitor exposure.
Mease and colleagues note that the efficacy of secukinumab improved in the 86 patients who had their dose increased from 150 to 300 mg every 4 weeks.
The investigators say that “no new safety concerns” were identified in the 5-year study, and conclude that their findings “add to the growing body of evidence supporting the use of IL-17 inhibitors for the treatment of PsA as recognized in the guidelines from the EULAR, GRAPPA, and recently the ACR/National Psoriasis Foundation (NPF).”
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