Patients treated with aflibercept experienced greater improvements in NPDR
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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The proportion of patients with a 2 or more-step improvement in non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy scores was significantly greater when treated with aflibercept compared to a sham, according to a speaker here.
“PANORAMA is the first large, prospective trial of high risk, non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy patients since the Early Treatment Diabetic Retinopathy Study,” W. Lloyd Clark, MD, said at the Retina World Congress.
Clark presented the 52-week results of the PANORAMA study, a phase 3, double-masked study that evaluated the efficacy and safety of intravitreal aflibercept injections in patients with moderately severe to severe non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy.
The study included 402 randomized total participants, with 135 being treated with 2 mg of aflibercept every 16 weeks, 134 being treated with 2 mg of aflibercept every 8 weeks, and 133 in in a sham control.
“Vision threatening complications occurred in a substantially greater proportion of sham patients and no safety signals with aflibercept were identified,” he said.
The primary endpoint of the study was the proportion of patients with a 2 or more-step improvement from baseline in diabetic retinopathy severity scores at week 52. Clark noted 65.2% of patients treated with aflibercept every 16 weeks and 79.9% of patients treated every 8 weeks improved 2 or more-steps compared with just 15% of sham patients.
“When pooled with center-involved diabetic macular edema, 40% of eyes in the sham group developed a complication within 1 year of the PANORAMA study. That compares very favorably to the active treatment groups with an approximately 75% reduction in rates of complications in eyes treated actively with aflibercept regardless of dosing,” he said. – by Robert Linnehan
Reference: Clark WL. The Value of Treating Non-proliferative Diabetic Retinopathy. Presented at: Retina World Congress; March 21 to 24, 2019; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Disclosure: Clark reports he is a speaker, consultant, and receives grant support from Regeneron and Genentech/Roche. He reports receiving grant support from Santen.