Researchers also looked at a subgroup of 295 patients as part of an open-label extension study who had no clinical response to tofacitinib 10 mg twice daily after 8 weeks and subsequently treated them for an additional 8 weeks. After the additional 8 weeks of treatment, over half (51.2%) displayed clinical responses and 8.6% were in remission.
“This is a desperate patient population. These are impressive results,” stated Darrell Pardi, MD, vice chair of the advisory committee and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.
Serious adverse events were seen in 4% of tofacitinib-treated patients in the induction trials, compared with 6% of placebo-treated, according to Lesley Hanes, MD, medical officer with the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.
Adverse events appeared to be dose dependent, with risk of deaths and malignancies (excluding nonmelanoma skin cancer), opportunistic infections, herpes zoster infection (HZ), “possible” drug-induced liver injury, and cardiovascular and thromboembolic events more common with the 10-mg dose, Dr. Hanes said.*