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Brodalumab effective against psoriatic arthritis

Brodalumab significantly improved response rates among patients with psoriatic arthritis, according to recent study data.

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled study, researchers randomly assigned 168 adult patients with active psoriatic arthritis to receive either 140 mg or 280 mg of brodalumab or placebo day 1 and at weeks 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. The primary end point of the study was 20% improvement in American College of Rheumatology response criteria (ACR 20) at week 12. At 12 weeks, patients were offered open-label brodalumab (280 mg) every 2 weeks.

By week 12, ACR 20 occurred in significantly more patients who received brodalumab 140 mg (37%; P = .03) and 280 mg (39%; P = .02), compared with 18% of patients who received placebo, according to the researchers.

Improvement of 50%, or ACR 50, also occurred more frequently in the brodalumab 140 mg (14%; P = .05) and 280 mg (14%; P = .05) groups compared with those in the placebo group (4%). However, rates of 70% improvement were not higher among patients who received brodalumab compared with placebo.

Scores for disease activity showed significant improvement for patients receiving either dose of brodalumab compared with placebo at week 12. In addition, during the same time period, significant improvements were reported in the physician’s assessments of disease and patient-reported outcomes, according to the researchers.

The most commonly reported adverse events were upper respiratory tract infection, fatigue, diarrhea and headache, with severe adverse events occurring in 3% of patients in the brodalumab groups and 2% of patients in the placebo group.

Disclosures: Mease, Genovese, Greenwald, Ritchlin, Beaulieu and Deodhar received grants from Amgen during the conduct of the study. Feng, Newmark, Erondu and Nirula are employed by or have equity interest in Amgen.