The arthritis treatment drug etanercept is more effective in younger patients who have low measures of disability and less history of using disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs, a new study reports.
Researchers from the Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital in the Netherlands analyzed data from 262 people with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and found that those who responded best to etanercept treatment had lower scores on measures of disability at the beginning of the study, were younger in age, and used fewer antirheumatic drugs in the past.
Poor responders were more likely to be female and to have systematic JIA.
Out of the 262 participants in the study, 85 responded excellently to treatment after 15 months. 85 patients responded poorly to treatment, and 92 patients were considered intermediate responders.
"The ability to identify patients who are more likely to respond to etanercept treatment would be an important step toward tailored patient-specific treatment and subsequently could improve current treatment approaches," the researchers wrote, as quoted by Yahoo News.
The study was led by Marieke H. Otten, M.D., and colleagues at the Erasmus MC Sophia Children's Hospital in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The research was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
