medwireNews: Findings from a network meta-analysis (NMA) suggest that the efficacy profile of peficitinib is largely similar to that of other Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Given the current lack of head-to-head trials comparing JAK inhibitors with each other, Yoshiya Tanaka (University of Occupational and Environmental Health, Kitakyushu, Japan) and team carried out the NMA to indirectly compare RA outcomes among patients treated with approved doses of peficitinib, tofacitinib, or baricitinib in 21 randomized placebo-controlled trials involving a total of 6542 patients.
The researchers report in Rheumatology and Therapy that the majority of efficacy outcomes at week 12 were comparable among patients treated with peficitinib 100 mg or 150 mg once daily versus those given tofacitinib 5 mg twice daily or baricitinib 2 mg or 4 mg once daily.
However, some outcomes were better with peficitinib compared with the other agents. For instance, the proportion of patients achieving a DAS28-ESR of 3.2 points or less at week 12, and ACR20 and 50 response rates at week 24, were significantly higher among patients treated with peficitinib 150 mg versus tofacitinib or either dose of baricitinib.
Tanaka and team report that there was also an interaction between ethnicity and treatment outcomes in their NMA, with a greater magnitude of benefit for JAK inhibitors versus placebo in trials that included a larger proportion of Asian participants.
“Further studies are required to better characterize the impact of ethnicity on the efficacy of JAK inhibitors,” they conclude.
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