Key clinical point: A greater proportion of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) initially treated with oral baricitinib maintained lower levels of radiographic progression over 5 years than those initially treated with conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs or placebo.
Major finding: At 5 years, no radiographic progression was achieved by a greater proportion of DMARD-naive patients with initial treatment with 4 mg baricitinib (59.0%) and initial treatment with 4 mg baricitinib + methotrexate (66.2%) vs. those with initial methotrexate treatment (40.7%). Similarly, a greater proportion of patients with inadequate response to methotrexate with initial baricitinib treatment (54.8%) or adalimumab treatment (55.0%) achieved no progression vs. those with initial placebo treatment (50.3%).
Study details: Findings are from a long-term extension RA-BEYOND trial , which included 2,125 patients with active adult-onset RA who completed any 1 of RA-BEGIN, RA-BEAM, or RA-BUILD phase 3 trials.
Disclosures: Eli Lilly and Company supported this study. The authors declared receiving grant/research support and consulting/speaker’s fees from various sources including Eli Lilly and Company. Three authors reported being current or former employees and shareholders of Eli Lilly.
Source: van der Heijde D et al. J Rheumatol. 2021 Sep 15. doi: 10.3899/jrheum.210346.