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30-09-2022 | Rheumatoid arthritis | News

News in brief

Study identifies sex differences in RA remission rates

Author: Claire Barnard

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medwireNews: Men with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) initiating treatment with biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs may be more likely to achieve remission than women, suggests research reported at The Lancet Summit: Sex and gender in rheumatology.

The study, presented by Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), included 3722 people with RA (76% women) who initiated tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (85%), other biologics (12%), or targeted synthetic DMARDs (3%) and were included in a Swiss registry between 1997 and 2019.

Overall, men were significantly more likely to achieve remission (DAS28<2.6) within 1 year than women, with an odds ratio of 1.24 after adjustment for potential confounders. There were a total of 1033 remission events during the study period.

Vallejo-Yagüe said that mediation analyses identified baseline disease activity and disease duration as factors that could explain the association between male sex and higher probability of achieving remission. Men had a significantly lower average DAS28-ESR at baseline (4.2 vs 4.4 for women), as well as a significantly shorter median disease duration (3.4 vs 5.0 years).

These findings suggest that “if we start treating our female patients earlier with biologics or targeted synthetic DMARDs we may […] reduce the observed sex disparity in DAS28 remission,” concluded the presenter.

medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare Ltd. © 2022 Springer Healthcare Ltd, part of the Springer Nature Group

The Lancet Summit: Sex and gender in rheumatology; September 22–23, 2022

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