MabThera shown to be effective



Media Release

|[pic] | |

| | | |

| |

|Basel, 11 June 2008 |

|EMBARGO: 00.01 (CET) |

| |

|New evidence shows MabThera® is more effective than a second TNF inhibitor in rheumatoid arthritis patients who have interrupted|

|anti-TNF therapy due to lack of efficacy |

| |

|New data also proves MabThera’s inhibition of joint damage is maintained over two years |

A recent study[i] has called into question the practice of putting rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients onto a second tumour necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor therapy, a commonly used class of RA drugs, when they do not respond to the first TNF inhibitor.

The study, presented at the EULAR annual meeting (European League Against Rheumatism) in Paris, revealed that when RA patients do not respond to a TNF inhibitor, it is more effective to treat them with MabThera (rituximab), an RA drug with a different mode of action, than to use a second TNF inhibitor therapy.1

The study was conducted among 300 patients who had previously not responded to TNF inhibitor therapy. It analyzed the improvement in the disease activity score (DAS28)2 of patients receiving MabThera compared to patients receiving an alternative TNF inhibitor. Data at six months showed that MabThera achieved a significantly larger reduction in disease activity (DAS28) than a subsequent TNF inhibitor in patients who had interrupted TNF inhibitor therapy due to lack of efficacy (reduction in DAS28 by 1.55 versus 1.03)1.

“These findings are significant because they confirm the benefit of switching to an alternative biological agent, such as rituximab, in the subset of RA patients who don’t respond to a first anti-TNF agent”, said Dr Axel Finckh, Rheumatology Division, University of Geneva, Switzerland, presenting the results. “In patients with persistent active disease despite anti-TNF therapy, our data suggest that switching to rituximab is more effective than switching to an alternative anti-TNF agent.”

Inhibition of joint damage

New data from another study, REFLEX3, also presented at EULAR, demonstrate that MabThera continues to significantly inhibit the progression of joint damage caused by RA over a period of two years in those patients who do not respond to TNF inhibitor therapy4. X-ray evidence at two years showed that the narrowing of joint spaces and appearance of new bone erosions were reduced by more than 50% in patients receiving MabThera and methotrexate (a commonly used RA drug) compared to patients receiving methotrexate alone (Genant-modified Sharp Score increase of 1.14 versus 2.81 respectively, p ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download