Conference Coverage
EULAR: Serious adverse events rise with number of biologics used in JIA
Key clinical point: JIA patients who had used more than one biologic while on methotrexate had nearly twice the rate of adverse events as did...
ROME – The rate of adverse events in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis appears to climb with the use of more than one biologic agent over time, Dr. Joost Swart reported at the European Congress of Rheumatology.
When used with methotrexate, the rate of adverse events doubled among users of one biologic agent when compared against patients who used methotrexate alone, and tripled among users of more than one biologic, according to the study of nearly 6,000 patients in the Pharmachild registry.
Dr. Swart, a pediatric rheumatologist/immunologist in the department of pediatric immunology and rheumatology in the Wilhelmina Children’s Hospital at University Medical Center Utrecht (the Netherlands), said in an interview that while patients who took a biologic had a higher rate of ever using systemic corticosteroids, it’s not clear whether that contributed to the difference in adverse events.