Upadacitinib may alone improve treatment outcomes in rheumatoid Arthritis: Study

Monotherapy with Upadacitinib demonstrated significant improvements in clinical, radiographic, and patient‐reported outcomes in patients with predominantly early rheumatoid arthritis and who have had limited exposure to methotrexate, finds a study. The study was published in the journal 'Arthritis & Rheumatology' 2020.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease which mainly affects the peripheral joints. Synovial inflammation and hyperplasia, autoantibody production, cartilage damage and bone destruction, leading to co-morbidities are the main disease characteristics. Upadacitinib is an oral, reversible, JAK1 selective inhibitor and disease modifying anti rheumatic drug. Select – Early trial is a randomised, double-blind, active-comparator, Multicentre, multi-country trial which measured the safety and efficacy of upadacitinib as monotherapy in moderately to severely active rheumatoid arthritis.

There were totally 947 participants in the study. The trial was carried out for 24 weeks. The participants were randomly divided to once‐daily upadacitinib either 15mg or 30mg or weekly methotrexate at 7.5–20mg/week for 24 weeks. The primary endpoints of measurement were the proportions of patients achieving ≥50% response in the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria at Week 12, and proportions achieving a 28‐joint Disease Activity Score including C‐reactive protein (DAS28[CRP]) of <2.6 at Week 24.