Patient-reported outcomes improve with rheumatoid arthritis treatment, suggest study

Patients with moderate to severely active rheumatoid arthritis and inadequate responses to methotrexate were shown to have improvements across a broad range of patient outcomes with tofacitinib or adalimumab in a new study.

In this 12-month trial, supported by Pfizer, patients receiving methotrexate were randomly chosen to take either 5 or 10mg of tofacitinib (Xeljianz, an oral Janus kinase inhibitor) twice daily, 40mg adalimumab, (Humira, a subcutaneously injected tumor necrosis factor inhibitor) once every two weeks, or a placebo. A number of patient outcomes were measured from pain, to fatigue and sleep.

After three months of treatments there were significant changes with patients taking 10mg of tofacitinib compared to the placebo wit the highest number of patients reporting improvements and these clinically measured changed were sustained for 12 months. Changes from the beginning of the trail and after three months with patients taking 5mg of tofacitinib and those on adalimumab were similar and statistically significant versus the placebo across most of the patient outcomes.

The study, reported in Rheumatology, was conducted by Dr Vibeke Strand and his team of researchers at Stanford University, California. The researchers say, “These results indicate that tofacitinib not only improves physical function, global assessments of disease activity, pain, and fatigue, but also other aspects of health-related quality of life, particularly well-being and emotional health of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.”

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