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Real-world belimumab reduces disease activity in patients with lupus
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Belimumab reduced disease activity and corticosteroid use after 6 months, according to real-world results published in Rheumatology and Therapy.
“The OBSErve Germany study provides the first insight into belimumab use and outcomes for systemic erythematosus lupus patients (SLE) in Germany, 2 years after its market launch,” Andreas Schwarting, MD, in the department of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz in Germany, and colleagues wrote. “The real-world results reveal that, after 6 months of belimumab treatment, disease activity as well as concomitant corticosteroid use was reduced in the study population of patients that mostly had moderate or severe SLE and elevated autoreactive antibody levels. The low rate of discontinuation supports the good general tolerability of belimumab.”
Schwarting and colleagues collected data from 102 patients with SLE, 6 months before and after belimumab initiation.
After 6 months, 78% of patients showed improvement in disease activity of at least 20%, according to physician judgment. For 42% of these patients, the improvement was at least 50%. In a subgroup of 56 patients, the SLE Disease Activity Index decreased from 10.6 to 5.6. In 63 patients with a corticosteroid dose of at least 7.5 mg at belimumab initiation, there was a corticosteroid dose reduction from 13.7 mg/day to 7.6 mg/day. Overall, six patients discontinued belimumab in the 6-month period.
“Such a new therapeutic option for a subgroup of patients with higher disease activity is particularly valuable in the context of a variable disease like SLE, where the unmet medical need still is high, the quality of life markedly reduced for the affected patients, and for which no other new therapies have been approved for decades.” – by Will Offit
Disclosure: Schwarting reports receiving personal fees from GlaxoSmithKline during the conduct of the study, as well as grants and personal fees from GlaxoSmithKline outside the submitted work.
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