Bottom Line
Both Dr. Kim and Dr. Michaud are careful to emphasize the importance of educating rheumatologists and patients that triple therapy is still an effective weapon in the RA arsenal and may yield considerable cost savings over biologic therapies.
“While there is still a huge difference in the cost between the two treatment strategies (TNFi plus MTX versus triple therapy), it is reassuring to know the risk for serious infection is not substantially different between the two groups,” Dr. Kim says.
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Bryn Nelson, PhD, is a medical journalist based in Seattle.
References
- Kang EH, Jin Y, Tong AY, et al. Risk of serious infection among initiators of TNF inhibitors plus methotrexate versus triple therapy for rheumatoid arthritis: A cohort study. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2019 Aug 3. doi: 10.1002/acr.24038. [Online ahead of print].
- Ozen G, Pedro S, Schumacher R, et al. Safety of abatacept compared with other biologic and conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: Data from an observational study. Arthritis Res Ther. 2019 Jun 7;21(1):141.
