medwireNews: Follow-up results from the SIRROUND-D trial indicate that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) refractory to DMARDs who are treated with sirukumab experience sustained improvements in clinical outcomes for up to 2 years.
Kaiyin Fei (Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance, California, USA) and co-investigators demonstrated that ACR20 response rates were comparable at the 1- and 2-year follow-up among patients who were treated with the interleukin (IL)-6 inhibitor, with corresponding rates of 70.9% and 68.3% for the 476 patients given sirukumab 50 mg every 4 weeks, and 76.9% and 74.6% for the 468 patients given the 100 mg dose every 2 weeks.
Improvements in DAS28-CRP, CDAI, and patient-reported outcomes were also sustained at the 2-year follow-up, and patients who were initially assigned to receive placebo and switched to sirukumab at week 18, 40, or 52 experienced similar improvements in clinical outcomes as those who received sirukumab throughout the study, report the researchers in RMD Open.
They add that radiographic progression was “minimal” over the 2-year study period, and was comparable among patients initially given sirukumab and those who switched from placebo.
“The results lend support to the effectiveness of biological IL-6 pathway inhibitors as a class of DMARDs in patients with treatment-refractory RA,” conclude the investigators.
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