Tofacitinib versus tocilizumab in the treatment of biological-naive or previous biological-failure patients with methotrexate-refractory active rheumatoid arthritis

Objectives To compare effectiveness between tofacitinib and tocilizumab treatments for biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (bDMARD)-naive patients or previous bDMARD-failure patients with active rheumatoid arthritis (RA) refractory to methotrexate (MTX). Methods We used two ongoing real-world registries of patients with RA who had first started tofacitinib or tocilizumab between August 2013 and February 2019 at our institutions. Clinical disease activity index (CDAI)-based improvements at 12 months were used for comparisons between tofacitinib and tocilizumab treatments, separately for bDMARD-naive and previous bDMARD-failure patients. Results A total of 464 patients with RA with high or moderate CDAI were enrolled (247 with tofacitinib and 217 with tocilizumab). After adjustments for treatment-selection bias by propensity score matching, we showed that tofacitinib was more likely to induce and maintain >= 85% improvement in CDAI (CDAI85), CDAI70 and remission at 12 months compared with tocilizumab in bDMARD-naive patients. After adjusting for concurrent use of MTX and prednisolone, the ORs of tofacitinib versus tocilizumab were 3.88 (95% CI 1.87 to 8.03) for CDAI85, 2.89 (95% CI 1.43 to 5.84) for CDAI70 and 3.31 (95% CI 1.69 to 6.48) for remission. These effects were not observed in bDMARD-failure patients. In tofacitinib treatment for bDMARD-failure patients, the number of previously failed bDMARD classes was not associated with CDAI-based improvements. The rate of overall adverse events was similar between both treatments. Similar ORs were obtained from patients adjusted by inverse probability of treatment weighting. Conclusions Compared with tocilizumab, tofacitinib can induce greater improvements during the first 12-month treatment in bDMARD-naive patients, but this difference was not observed in previous bDMARD-failure patients.

Automated summary

The study found that tofacitinib was more effective in inducing greater improvements in bDMARD-naive patients with active RA during the first 12 months of treatment compared to tocilizumab, but this difference was not observed in bDMARD-failure patients.