Key clinical point: Multi-Biomarker Disease Activity (MBDA) should not be preferred to assess clinically meaningful improvements in disease activity after repository corticotropin injection (RCI) therapy in patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Major finding: RCI-mediated improvements in Disease Activity Score 28-erythrocyte sedimentation rate and Clinical Disease Activity Index scores suggested clinically meaningful improvement with more than 84% of patients meeting the minimal clinically important difference/minimally important difference criteria, which ranged from 26.3% to 34.7% for MBDA.
Study details: The data come from a multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled study of 259 patients with active RA despite treatment with stable glucocorticoid dose and 1 or 2 disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs. Patients achieving low disease activity during open-label period were randomly assigned to either 80 U of RCI (n=77) or placebo (n=76) during the 12-week double-blind period.
Disclosures: This study was funded by Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. R Fleischmann, DE Furst, and OG Segurado reported receiving clinical trial grants and consulting fees from various pharmaceutical companies including Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. J Liu and J Zhu declared being employees of Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
Source: Fleischmann R et al. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2021 Feb 28. doi: 10.1002/acr.24583 .