medwireNews: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients gain similar benefits from biologic treatment irrespective of whether they develop the disease before or after the age of 60 years, study findings suggest.
Therefore, when treating older people with RA, rheumatologists “should use the same criteria for whether to use a biologic as [they would use] for younger RA patients,” lead researcher Sadao Jinno (Kobe University, Japan) told medwireNews.
Among 988 patients enrolled in a Japanese registry who initiated biologic treatment between 2009 and 2017, 63.2% were diagnosed with RA at the age of 60 years or older (late-onset RA) and the remaining 36.8% developed the disease at a younger age (early-onset RA).
Jinno and colleagues found that patients with late-onset RA experienced similar improvements in CDAI score over 48 weeks to those with early-onset RA after adjustment for factors including sex, disease duration, use of other medications, and baseline CDAI score. Rates of treatment discontinuation and adverse events were also comparable across the two groups in the adjusted analysis.
The results were reported in a poster presentation at the 2019 ACR/ARP Annual Meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2019 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group
This information is brought to you by medwireNews and is not sponsored by, nor a part of, the American College of Rheumatology
Arthritis Rheumatol 2019; 71 (suppl 10)
ACR/ARP 2019; Atlanta, Georgia, USA: 8–13 November