Discussion
PsA, rheumatic, rheumatic disease, RA, chronic rheumatic disease
RHEUMATIC DISEASE
Treatment persistence, or the total time from initiation to discontinuation of therapy, has been used as a surrogate measure of overall treatment success because it is influenced by drug efficacy, patient satisfaction, safety, and tolerability. The present study compared the treatment persistence of golimumab, a TNFi often taken for years by patients with chronic rheumatic disease, across multiple clinical trials in different rheumatic disease indications and lines of therapy. The results of this post-hoc analysis indicate highly favorable long-term retention of golimumab for trial participants with RA, PsA, or AS, typically around 70% at Year 5 when taken as a 1The present study has a couple of important limitations. The disproportionately higher proportion of participants with RA compared to participants with PsA and AS in the 1Higher treatment persistence with 1A recent retrospective analysis of the BIOBADASER database reported rates of golimumab persistence lower than those found in our analysis of the GO Phase III trials [Golimumab persistence reported in the literature is variable and is likely due to small sample sizes as well as differences in study designs and study populations (consisting of biologic naïve and biologic experienced, in addition to multiple lines of therapy), making inter study comparisons limited. For example, not all reports are consistent with the current finding that golimumab treatment persistence over 5 years does not differ between the approved rheumatic indications. In the BIOBADASER population, golimumab retention rates were shown to be higher among patients with AS or PsA than those with RA; however, this population consisted of a mixture of therapy lines that were roughly similar across the indications [