Bimekizumab results in rapid, sustained improvements to PsA patient reported outcomes
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Key takeaways:
- Improvements in PsAID-12 score were seen at week 4 and continued through 1 year.
- Results were consistent across patients who were biologic DMARD-naïve and those with inadequate response to TNF inhibitors.
Bimekizumab treatment for psoriatic arthritis demonstrated rapid, clinically meaningful improvements to patient reported outcomes that were sustained up to 1 year, according to data published in Rheumatology.
“Psoriatic arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory disease that can significantly impact health-related quality of life across physical, social and emotional aspects,” Laure Gossec, MD, PhD, a professor of rheumatology at Pitié-Salpêtrière University Hospital and Sorbonne University, in Paris, told Healio. “The profound impact of this disease on patients’ lives emphasized the need to formally evaluate disease impact from the patient perspective, alongside the clinical disease activity.”
To evaluate the impact of bimekizumab (Bimzelx, UCB) on patient-relevant symptoms and health-related quality of life, Gossec and colleagues conducted what she described as the first ever study to incorporate the 12-item Psoriatic Arthritis Impact of Disease (PsAID-12) questionnaire. The researchers carried out post-hoc analyses of two phase 3 trials — BE OPTIMAL and BE COMPLETE — as well as the BE VITAL open-label extension, which evaluated bimekizumab in patients with active PsA.
The questionnaire included physical and psychological domains covering “a broad spectrum of symptoms impacting [health-related quality of life],” the researchers wrote. They assessed score changes from baseline up to 1 year, or up to week 40 in BE COMPLETE.
According to the researchers, improvements in PsAID-12 score were seen as early as week 4 and continued through 1 year. The 1-year mean change from baseline “was comparable” whether patients had initially been assigned to bimekizumab or placebo and switched to bimekizumab at week 16, they wrote.
At 1 year, 35.3% to 47.8% of patients demonstrated minimal or no symptom impact across studies and arms. There were also improvements at 1 year in pain, fatigue, skin problems and all other single-item domains, the researchers wrote.
“These results are important since they improve understanding of the effects of 1-year bimekizumab treatment from a patient perspective, including the impact on symptom reduction, physical function and overall disease impact,” Gossec said. “Results such as these would be relevant when discussing expectations with patients in a shared decision-making approach.”
Gossec added that a strength of the analysis was its inclusion of two patient populations — those who were naïve to biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and those with inadequate response to TNF inhibitors.
“Notably, results which reflect the patient perspective were consistent across both populations, indicating improvement irrespective of biologic use,” she said. “These results support the previously published bimekizumab 52-week clinical data in psoriatic arthritis.”
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