Background/Purpose:

Tofacitinib, a JAK3 inhibitor has been used to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in Turkey since 2015. The aim of this study was to investigate the drug survival, its efficacy and safety in patients with RA based on the database from the Turkish TURKBIO registry.

Methods:

A total of 180 patients (152 female, median age: 54.5 years) were treated with tofacitinib for RA. Drug survival was assessed. In 118 patients with available data, treatment response was evaluated using the number of sensitive and swollen joints, VAS values, DAS28, HAQ scores and CRP levels at weeks 12, 24, 48 and 60.

Results:

At baseline, RA patients had a median (Q1-Q3) disease duration of 14 (8-19) years. 75 patients (42%) had used ≥1 biologics previously. The other demographic and clinical features of the patients were shown in Table 1. Median (Q1-Q3) follow-up period was 137 weeks. After 48 and 137 weeks, 75% and 48% of the patients respectively, maintened tofacitinib (Figure 1). The most common reason for drug discontinuation was ineffectiveness of treatment (63%), followed by adverse events (23%). After 12 weeks, all disease activity parameters were reduced significantly compared to the baseline and most of them continued to be reduced until week 60. No difference was observed in disease activity parameters between the groups with and without previous ≥1 biologics at weeks 0, 12 and 24 (Table 2). Remission rate was (43%) at week 60 (observed data), (Table 2).

A total of 9 adverse events (4 infection, 3 allergic reaction, 2 rash) were observed during the follow-up period.

Conclusion:

The results of this long-term observational study suggest that tofacitinib might be an effective and safe treatment option in RA patients. Treatment with this drug may provide good response rates in RA patients refractory previous biologicals.