Pharmacological treatment patterns in patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis in the Netherlands: A real-world data analysis

Michelle M.A. Kip, Sytze de Roock, Gillian Currie, Deborah A. Marshall, Luiza R. Grazziotin, Marinka Twilt, Rae S.M. Yeung, Susanne M. Benseler, Sebastiaan J. Vastert, Nico Wulffraat, Joost F. Swart, Maarten J. IJzerman*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To investigate medication prescription patterns among children with JIA, including duration, sequence and reasons for medication discontinuation. METHODS: This study is a single-centre, retrospective analysis of prospective data from the electronic medical records of JIA patients receiving systemic therapy aged 0-18 years between 1 April 2011 and 31 March 2019. Patient characteristics (age, gender, JIA subtype) and medication prescriptions were extracted and analysed using descriptive statistics, Sankey diagrams and Kaplan-Meier survival methods. RESULTS: Over a median of 4.2 years follow-up, the 20 different medicines analysed were prescribed as monotherapy (n = 15) or combination therapy (n = 48 unique combinations) among 236 patients. In non-systemic JIA, synthetic DMARDs were prescribed to almost all patients (99.5%), and always included MTX. In contrast, 43.9% of non-systemic JIA patients received a biologic DMARD (mostly adalimumab or etanercept), ranging from 30.9% for oligoarticular persistent ANA-positive JIA, to 90.9% for polyarticular RF-positive JIA. Among systemic JIA, 91.7% received a biologic DMARD (always including anakinra). When analysing medication prescriptions according to their class, 32.6% involved combination therapy. In 56.8% of patients, subsequent treatment lines were initiated after unsuccessful first-line treatment, resulting in 68 unique sequences. Remission was the most common reason for DMARD discontinuation (44.7%), followed by adverse events (28.9%) and ineffectiveness (22.1%). CONCLUSION: This paper reveals the complexity of pharmacological treatment in JIA, as indicated by: the variety of mono- and combination therapies prescribed, substantial variation in medication prescriptions between subtypes, most patients receiving two or more treatment lines, and the large number of unique treatment sequences.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)SI170-SI180
Number of pages11
JournalRheumatology
Volume62
Issue numberSI2
Early online date18 May 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023

Keywords

  • biologicals
  • DMARD
  • JIA
  • treatment
  • UT-Hybrid-D

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