Low dose, add-on prednisolone in patients with rheumatoid arthritis aged 65+: the pragmatic randomised, double-blind placebo-controlled GLORIA trial.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Low-dose glucocorticoid (GC) therapy is widely used in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) but the balance of benefit and harm is still unclear.

Methods

The GLORIA (Glucocorticoid LOw-dose in RheumatoId Arthritis) pragmatic double-blind randomised trial compared 2 years of prednisolone, 5 mg/day, to placebo in patients aged 65+ with active RA. We allowed all cotreatments except long-term open label GC and minimised exclusion criteria, tailored to seniors. Benefit outcomes included disease activity (disease activity score; DAS28, coprimary) and joint damage (Sharp/van der Heijde, secondary). The other coprimary outcome was harm, expressed as the proportion of patients with ≥1 adverse event (AE) of special interest. Such events comprised serious events, GC-specific events and

SUBMITTER: Boers M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9209692 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature