When researchers studied 54 Sienese patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) they sought to better understand what impact longer intervals between administration of the injectable tumor-necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitor etanercept (Enbrel) would have on patients’ remission.
Writing in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology, Renato de Stefano and colleagues found that 72 percent of the psoriatic arthritis patients, ages 18 to 65, whom they recruited between 2012 and 2015, sustained remission after a year when they decreased their etanercept dosage from 25 mg twice-weekly to either weekly or every-other-week.
The patients in the study had been living with PsA for at least a year. Researchers defined active disease as at least three swollen joints and excluded those with other significant comorbidities.
At the study’s conclusion, 27 patients (93 percent) were still in remission. Six (21 percent) were taking etanercept twice a week; 6 (21 percent) were taking the drug weekly; and 15 (51 percent) were on every-other-week schedules. “There were no statistically significant differences in the incidence of adverse events between the biweekly etanercept therapy group and the every-other-week etanercept therapy group,” the authors wrote.
