medwireNews: Disease activity after 3 months of treatment can predict the long-term success of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor therapy in patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA), researchers report.
“This substantiates the choice of the 3-month assessment as essential for treatment adaptations” to optimize long-term outcomes, say Daniel Aletaha (Vienna Medical University, Austria) and study co-authors.
The team analyzed data from 216 golimumab-treated patients who participated in the GO-REVEAL trial, and found that disease activity index for PsA (DAPSA) scores at 3 months were “very strong predictors” of achieving low disease activity (LDA) after 6 months and 1 year, correctly identifying patients with LDA on a corresponding 92% and 88% of occasions.
Similarly, patients with an early treatment response – defined as an 85% or greater improvement in the DAPSA score at 3 months – had an 84% likelihood of achieving LDA at 6 months, and an 82% chance of reaching this endpoint at 1 year. These results remained consistent in a validation cohort of infliximab-treated patients from the IMPACT 2 trial.
These findings indicate “that the potential of a new therapy to suppress disease activity sufficiently at 6 months or 1 year can be predicted well at the 3-month time point, depending on whether or not patients prove to be responding at this early assessment,” concludes the team in Rheumatology.
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