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Donahue KE, Jonas D, Hansen RA, et al. Drug Therapy for Psoriatic Arthritis in Adults: Update of a 2007 Report [Internet]. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (US); 2012 Apr. (Comparative Effectiveness Reviews, No. 54.)
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Drug Therapy for Psoriatic Arthritis in Adults: Update of a 2007 Report [Internet].
Show detailsBackground
Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is among the most disabling forms of arthritis, even though it affects fewer people than other types of arthritis. PsA has a highly variable presentation, which generally involves pain and inflammation in joints and progressive joint involvement and damage. The condition is associated with the skin disease psoriasis, but not all people with psoriasis will develop PsA. Additionally, PsA may predate the development of skin disease, leading to some diagnostic uncertainty. Among people with psoriasis, the prevalence of arthritis varies from 6 percent to 42 percent. In the general population, the prevalence of PsA is estimated to be 0.3 percent to 1 percent. Based on estimates from the 2000 U.S. Census, 520,000 people ages 18 or older in the United States have PsA.
Treatment of patients with PsA aims to control pain and inflammation and, ultimately, to slow the progression of joint destruction and disability. Available therapies for PsA include corticosteroids, oral disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs or DMARDs (hydroxychloroquine, leflunomide, methotrexate [MTX], and sulfasalazine), and biologic DMARDs. Five biologics (adalimumab, certolizumab pegol, etanercept, golimumab, and infliximab) are also classified as antitumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) drugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved adalimumab, etanercept, golimumab, and infliximab for use in patients with PsA. This report also reviews evidence for abatacept, anakinra, certolizumab, rituximab, and tocilizumab, which are approved for rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
Historically, few trials have been conducted with patients having PsA, with only minimal research before biologic agents were introduced; management options tended to be adapted from RA trial evidence. Similar to RA trials, many questions remain about the risks of these agents across a spectrum of adverse events from relatively minor side effects such as injection-site reactions to severe and possibly life-threatening problems such as severe infections or infusion reactions.
Experts have not arrived at a consensus about the comparative effectiveness of corticosteroids, oral DMARDs, and biologic DMARDs for treating PsA. More importantly, it is unclear how the effectiveness and safety of different types of combination therapy compare. In addition, there is debate about how early in the disease process combination therapy should be initiated and whether patients will respond to a biologic agent if they have previously failed a different biologic agent. Finally, very little is known about the benefits or risks of these drugs in different patient subgroups, including ethnic minorities, the elderly, pregnant women, and patients with other comorbidities.
Objectives
This report summarizes the evidence on the comparative efficacy, effectiveness, and harms of corticosteroids, oral DMARDs, and biologic DMARDs in the treatment of patients with PsA. This report updates a previous version published in 2007. The Key Questions (KQs) are as follows:
- KQ 1.
For patients with PsA, do drug therapies differ in their ability to reduce disease activity, to slow or limit the progression of radiographic joint damage, or to maintain remission?
- KQ 2.
For patients with PsA, do drug therapies differ in their ability to improve patient-reported symptoms, functional capacity, or quality of life?
- KQ 3.
For patients with PsA, do drug therapies differ in harms, tolerability, patient adherence, or adverse effects?
- KQ 4.
What are the comparative benefits and harms of drug therapies for PsA in subgroups of patients based on stage of disease, prior therapy, demographics, concomitant therapies, or comorbidities?
Analytic Framework
Figure A lays out the analytic framework that guided the research.
![Figure A is an analytic framework depicting the conceptual model around which this project is framed. It shows the logical linkage between the patient population of adults with psoriatic arthritis, pharmacological interventions aimed to treat symptoms, adverse effects of treatment, and intermediate and final health outcomes of interest. Pharmacological interventions include corticosteroids and biologic and oral DMARDS. Intermediate outcomes include those related to symptoms and joint damage. Final health outcomes include quality of life and morbidity.](/books/NBK95252/bin/executivesummaryf1.gif)
Figure A
Analytic framework for treatment for psoriatic arthritis. DMARDS = disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs; KQ = Key Question
Methods
A Technical Expert Panel was employed for the finalization of the KQs and review of the planned analysis strategy. Our KQs and protocol were posted on the AHRQ Web site for public review and comment. Two reviewers performed an external peer review; one a leading expert in psoriatic arthritis and one a faculty member in clinical epidemiology and informatics as well the project director for the Oregon Health and Science University’s Drug Effectiveness Review Project reports. The report was also posted for public review. We compiled all comments and addressed each one individually, revising the text as appropriate.
We searched MEDLINE®, Embase, the Cochrane Library, and the International Pharmaceutical Abstracts to identify relevant articles. We limited the electronic searches to “human” and “English language.” For this update, the searches went up to January 2011. Hand searches were conducted on the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) database of the FDA and unpublished literature, including dossiers from pharmaceutical companies.
Study eligibility (inclusion and exclusion) criteria were designed with respect to study design or duration, patient population, interventions, outcomes, and comparisons for each KQ. For efficacy and effectiveness, we focused on head-to-head trials and prospective cohort studies comparing one drug with another. For biologic DMARDs, we also included placebo-controlled, double-blind RCTs. For harms and tolerability, as well as for efficacy and effectiveness in subgroups, we included head-to-head trials, high-quality systematic reviews, and observational studies. We included studies with sample sizes of at least 100 and duration of at least 3 months. We included only studies that used doses within the recommended dosing range or that used doses that could be considered equivalent to recommended doses.
Two individuals independently reviewed abstracts identified by searches. If both reviewers agreed that a study did not meet eligibility criteria, we excluded it. We obtained the full text of all remaining articles. Two individuals again independently reviewed the full text of all remaining articles to determine whether they should be included.
We designed and used a structured data abstraction form to ensure consistency of appraisal for each included study. Trained reviewers abstracted data from each study. A senior reviewer evaluated the completeness of each data abstraction.
We rated the quality of individual studies using the predefined criteria based on those developed by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (ratings: good, fair, poor)1 and the National Health Service Centre for Reviews and Dissemination.2 Two independent reviewers assigned quality ratings. They resolved any disagreements by discussion and consensus or by consulting with a third reviewer. We gave a good-quality rating to studies that met all criteria. We gave a poor-quality rating to studies that had a fatal flaw (defined as a methodological shortcoming that leads to a very high risk of bias) in one or more categories and excluded them from our analyses.
We synthesized the literature qualitatively. We graded the strength of evidence as high, moderate, low, or insufficient based on methods guidance for the EPC program.3,4 We graded strength of evidence for the outcomes determined to be most important: measures of disease activity (e.g., ACR 20/50/70,a DAS), radiographic changes, functional capacity, quality of life, withdrawals due to adverse events, and specific adverse events if data were available (e.g., injection-site reactions, infections, malignancy).
Results
We identified 3,868 citations from our searches. We included 24 published articles reporting on 16 studies: 0 head-to-head randomized controlled trials, 0 head-to-head nonrandomized controlled trials, 10 placebo-controlled trials, 3 meta-analyses or systematic reviews, and 3 observational studies. Our findings included studies rated good or fair for internal validity. Most studies were of fair quality.
Our major findings are presented in this section by type of drug comparison and important outcomes (both benefits and harms as described in KQ 1, KQ 2, and KQ 3) (Table A). No comparative evidence was identified for KQ 4.
Table A
Summary of findings.
Overall, the data are quite limited and the evidence is insufficient to draw firm conclusions on comparative efficacy, effectiveness, and harms of either oral or biologic DMARDs in this condition. Table B gives a range for effect sizes for commonly reported measures, including the American College of Rheumatology 20 percent improvement from baseline to endpoint (ACR 20), the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), and Medical Outcomes Study Short Form 36 Physical Component Score (SF-36 PCS). For the oral DMARDs, including sulfasalazine and methotrexate, sparse data are available.
Table B
Comparison of effect sizes from placebo-controlled trials for ACR 20, HAQ, and SF-36 PCS by drug.
Discussion
No head-to-head controlled trials meeting inclusion criteria existed for any drugs in this review for treating patients with PsA. Two cohort studies with low strength of evidence indicated that the combination of an anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) (adalimumab, etanercept, or infliximab) with methotrexate (MTX) only was not different in treatment response5,6 than treatment with anti-TNF only.
For the oral DMARDs, including sulfasalazine and methotrexate, the sparse data available involved placebo comparisons. For biologic DMARDs, evidence supported the efficacy of adalimumab, etanercept, golimumab, and infliximab for the treatment of PsA when compared to placebo.7–17 Qualitatively, these biologic DMARDs appeared to achieve similar ACR 20, HAQ, and SF-36 PCS scores in these trials (Table B). However, findings should be interpreted cautiously given these were not head-to-head trials. Evidence was insufficient to draw firm conclusions about the comparative efficacy, effectiveness, functional status, health-related quality of life, or tolerability of abatacept, adalimumab, anakinra, certolizumab, golimumab, etanercept, infliximab, rituximab, and tocilizumab for treating PsA.
Information generally was insufficient for the comparative harms, tolerability, adverse events, and adherence for patients with PsA. The available studies included two relatively small prospective cohort studies and placebo-controlled studies; no head-to-head studies meeting inclusion criteria have been published.
In terms of applicability to populations, the studies were generally multicenter involving adults with diagnosed PsA. Prior medications tried before these studies were variable, but in general patients had failed a DMARD prior to starting any of the biologic agents. It is also important to note that the diagnostic criteria for PsA before the 2006 publication of the ClASsification of Psoriatic Arthritis (CASPAR) criteria were not validated, which could lead to enrollment of patients that were not explicitly defined.
This report’s findings did not reveal any differences with current standard of care. However the current available evidence for PsA was limited. Several areas need further research to help clinicians and researchers arrive at stronger conclusions on the comparative efficacy, effectiveness, quality of life, and harms of medications for PsA. For this condition, the available evidence was limited to two head-to-head cohort studies and placebo-controlled trials. Head-to-head randomized controlled trials are needed to establish the comparative efficacy and safety of different treatments with and without corticosteroids, oral DMARDs, and biologic DMARDs to determine the best therapy to prevent or minimize debilitating joint damage and optimize quality of life for people with PsA. Furthermore, head-to-head RCTs are needed to determine the comparative effectiveness and safety of biologic DMARDs for treating PsA. More generally, the issues of effectiveness, subgroups, and use in ordinary clinical settings warrant attention for PsA.
Abbreviations
- ACR
American College of Rheumatology
- AHRQ
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
- CASPAR
ClASsification of Psoriatic Arthritis
- DMARD
disease-modifying antirheumatic drug
- FDA
U.S. Food and Drug administration
- HAQ
Health Assessment Questionnaire
- MTX
methotrexate
- PsA
psoriatic arthritis
- RCT
randomized controlled trial
- SF-36 PCS
Short Form 36 Physical Functioning Scale
References
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Footnotes
- a
American College of Rheumatology measure of disease activity: response scores based on 20, 50, or 70 percent criteria for improvement
- Executive Summary - Drug Therapy for Psoriatic Arthritis in Adults: Update of a ...Executive Summary - Drug Therapy for Psoriatic Arthritis in Adults: Update of a 2007 Report
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