Switching from intravenous to subcutaneous
tocilizumab
provides
improved remission/ low disease activity status.
According to a study published in 'Rheumatology and
Therapy', switching from intravenous (IV) to subcutaneous (SC) tocilizumab
found to maintain the efficacy of treatment for 6 months in rheumatoid
arthritis (RA) patients. Jean Darloy et al. investigated the maintenance of the
efficacy of subcutaneous tocilizumab 6 months post switching from IV to SC
among RA patients in a real-world setting. The secondary objectives were
studying disease and patients characteristics, efficacy of SC tocilizumab 12 months after switching,
maintenance of therapeutic characteristics and find out predictive factors of switching. The RoSwitch
was based on a French regional database- ‘‘RIC Nord de France'' Electronic
Medical Records.
This was a 1-year, non-interventional study which used
secondary data focusing on the exchange information on treated patients
suffering from chronic inflammatory rheumatisms between hospital and office-based
clinicians. The researchers of this study assessed all the RA patients of the
shared medical file "RIC Nord de France", treated with tocilizumab,
switching or not from IV to SC tocilizumab, between April 2015 - January 2016.
The proportion of patients in their DAS28-ESR category remission/low disease
activity (LDA) or moving to an inferior DAS28-ESR category at 6 months
comprised of the primary effectiveness endpoint. The RoSwitch was an
observational study, without randomization, hence a propensity score was built
in a sensitivity analysis to balance on RA and patients' attributes at
inclusion between the switching and no-switching groups.
An improvement of primary DAS28-ESR category or
maintenance in DAS28-ESR remission/LDA at 6 months was observed in 203
patients. The maintenance of efficacy at 6 and 12 months was observed in the
RoSwitch study. There were similar therapeutic maintenance rates for the switch
and no-switch patients. At inclusion, no clinical factor was concerned with the
switch in patients in remission/LDA.
Rheumatology and Therapy
Tocilizumab Effectiveness After Switching from Intravenous to Subcutaneous Route in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis: The RoSwitch Study
Jean Darloy et al.
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