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

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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 languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)SI170-SI180
JournalRheumatology (Oxford, England)
Volume62
Issue numberSI2
Early online date18 May 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2023
Externally publishedYes

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.

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