Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To investigate medication prescription patterns among children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), including duration, sequence and reasons for medication discontinuation.
METHODS: This study is a single-center, retrospective analysis of prospective data from 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 analyzed using descriptive statistics, Sankey diagrams, and Kaplan-Meier survival methods.
RESULTS: Over a median of 4.2 years follow-up, the 20 different medicines analyzed were prescribed as monotherapy (n = 15) or combination therapy (n = 48 unique combinations) among 236 patients. In non-systemic JIA, synthetic disease-modifying-anti-rheumatic-drugs (DMARDs) were prescribed to almost all patients (99.5%), and always included methotrexate. 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 analyzing medication prescriptions according to their class, 33.1% 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 ≥2 treatment lines, and the large number of unique treatment sequences.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | SI170-SI180 |
Journal | Rheumatology (Oxford, England) |
Volume | 62 |
Issue number | SI2 |
Early online date | 18 May 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2023 |
Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (Canada) [grant number 381280]; Genome Canada (Canada); ZonMw (the Netherlands) [grant number 848006001]; and ReumaNederland (the Netherlands)
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology.