LONDON -- Treatment with interleukin-6 receptor blocker tocilizumab (Acterma) appears safe in patients with rheumatoid arthritis whose disease has progressed on other advanced therapies, according to research here.
In the ACT-STAR trial, 886 patients with moderate to severe active rheumatoid arthritis, who had already been treated with anti-tumor necrosis factor drugs or disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARD), but had not achieved adequate responses from treatment, were enrolled.
Of the 836 patients in the study for whom liver function tests were recorded, just two patients experienced laboratory values in which the values exceeded five times the upper limit of normal, said Michael E. Weinblatt, MD, from Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston, during a presentation at a late-breaking abstract session of the annual meeting of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR).