Biosimilars and reference biological medicines in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis: A multicenter cross-sectional study in Catalonia, Spain.

Abstract

Objective</strong> The objective of this study is to compare the effectiveness of reference biologic medicines used in the treatmentof rheumatoid arthritis (RA) specifically adalimumab, etanercept, and infliximab, with corresponding biosimilar medicines,based on an exploratory analysis of clinical data obtained in patients treated with these medicines in five hospitals in theregion of Catalonia, Spain.<strong>Methods</strong> There is a consultation of the database of the Registry of Patients and Treatments of the Catalan Health Service:extraction of data from adult patients diagnosed with moderate and severe active RA and with active prescription of at leastone biological drug (reference or biosimilar) or JAK inhibitor. To compare the effectiveness of each reference biologic withits biosimilar, differences in mean DAS28-ESR values before and after treatment were assessed for adalimumab and itsbiosimilar, etanercept and its biosimilar, and infliximab and its biosimilar.<strong>Results</strong> The study consisted of 643 patients. The most dispensed medicines were anti-TNFs, with 303 patients on treatment. Thirty-sixpercent of all patients were using biosimilars. No statistically significant differences were observed in any of the three comparisonsbetween the reference biologic medicine and its biosimilar. These findings suggest that biosimilars have comparable effectiveness toreference biologics in reducing DAS28-ESR; in addition, they can provide substantial savings to public health systems.<strong>Conclusions</strong> A significant number of patients diagnosed with moderate to severe active RA were treated with biologicalmedicines and receiving the available biosimilar treatments. Future research should be conducted to confirm comparableeffectiveness found to their reference biologic medicines in this exploratory analysis.