Tocilizumab in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis and inadequate responses to DMARDs and/or TNF inhibitors: a large, open-label study close to clinical practice.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

To evaluate the safety and efficacy of tocilizumab in clinical practice in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with inadequate responses (IR) to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) or both DMARDs and tumour necrosis factor α inhibitors (TNFis).

Methods

Patients-categorised as TNFi-naive, TNFi-previous (washout) or TNFi-recent (no washout) -received open-label tocilizumab (8 mg/kg) every 4 weeks ± DMARDs for 24 weeks. Adverse events (AEs) and treatment discontinuations were monitored. Efficacy end points included American College of Rheumatology (ACR) responses, 28-joint disease activity score (DAS28) and European League Against Rheumatism responses.

Results

Overall, 1681 (976 TNF-naive, 298 TNFi-previous and 407 TNFi-recent) patients were trea

SUBMITTER: Bykerk VP 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3595980 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature