New data show half of patients with moderate to severe early rheumatoid arthritis showed no progression of joint damage at five years. These results were seen in patients who initially received HUMIRA® (adalimumab) in combination with methotrexate (MTX) for two years and continued on HUMIRA for an additional three years in an open-label extension study. These results were presented this week at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting in San Francisco.
Five-year results of the PREMIER study found that patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA) achieved the best results with an initial combination of HUMIRA and methotrexate. Early RA patients were defined as those who had been diagnosed with the disease for less than three years. The patients who were started on combination therapy of HUMIRA with MTX when they entered the PREMIER trial had less progression of joint damage at year five than patients who started on either HUMIRA or MTX therapy alone. Patients who received the combination of HUMIRA plus MTX had the smallest average increase in modified total Sharp score (mTSS), a measurement used to determine joint damage. The increase in mTSS at year five in the combination group was 2.9 compared with 9.7 in the MTX-alone group and 8.7 in the HUMIRA-alone group.
"Early and aggressive treatment of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis can help prevent the progression of joint damage caused by this disease," said Desiree van der Heijde, M.D., of the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands and lead author. "These data suggest that initial combined therapy with HUMIRA plus methotrexate for two years is better than either monotherapy alone in inhibiting radiographic progression for up to five years."