Background/Purpose: To describe the baseline characteristics, patient and physician preferences of rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with biologics or targeted therapies in a real world setting.

Methods: This is an interim analysis of a multicenter, prospective, observational study. We have recruited patients who were prescribed advanced RA treatments for the first time (bio-naïve) or needed a switch in their current advanced treatments (bio-experienced). The patients were classified as RA, according to ACR 2010 criteria. The patients will be followed for 12 months and will be evaluated with EQ-5D (EuroQol 5 Dimension), HAQ, DAS28-4(ESR), CQR-19 (Compliance Questionnaire for Rheumatology) and WPAI (Work Productivity and Activity Impairment) every three months. Target recruitment is 590 patients. For this analysis, database was locked by March 2018 with 370 patients.

Results: We have included the data from the baseline visits of 370 moderate to severe RA patients in this analysis. Baseline patient characteristics for demographic findings, disease state and compliance (CQR) are shown in Table 1. Among the bio-naïves, 58% declared that they would prefer using advanced treatments orally after the failure of conventional synthetic DMARDs, while 24% of them preferred SC and 17% IV infusion. Among the bio-experienced patients 46% (n=39) preferred oral intake, 31% (n=26) SC injection and 23% (n=19) IV infusion. In 54.0% of the cases, the drug administration routes in the physicians’ prescriptions were in concordance to the patients’ preference, whereas in 38.4% physicians prescribed drugs with different routes of administration. In 7.6% of the cases, patient preference is not known. In binary logistic regression analyses, patient and physician preferences for the route of administration were independent of baseline characteristics (Table 2).

Conclusion: Oral drug intake is the preferred route of administration for patients and physicians in advanced rheumatoid arthritis treatment. Patient and physician preferences for the route of administration were not related to the demographic or clinical variables.

Table 1: Baseline patient characteristics for demographic findings and disease activity scores.

Table 2: Binary logistic regression analyses of factors effecting patient’s and physician’s administration route preferences.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/interim-analysis-of-baseline-characteristics-and-preferences-of-administration-route-of-rheumatoid-arthritis-patients-who-are-bio-naive-or-switched-between-advanced-ra-treatments-a-multicenter-prosp/