Key clinical point: Risk for severe infections significantly increased in patients who were newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) after initiating biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARD).
Major finding: Over a period of 8 years, severe infection rates significantly increased in patients who were newly diagnosed with RA after initiating bDMARD (adjusted difference between pre- and post-bDMARD rates [Δ] 1.85; P = .001), whereas no significant change was observed in control individuals from the general population (Δ 0.12; P = .29).
Study details: Findings are from a population-based retrospective cohort study including 60,226 patients with newly diagnosed RA and 588,499 age- and sex-matched control individuals without any inflammatory arthritis from the general population who initiated bDMARD.
Disclosures: This study was supported by the Canadian Institute of Health Research and other sources. The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Source: Zhou VY et al. Risk of severe infections after the introduction of biologic DMARDs in people with newly diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis: A population-based interrupted time-series analysis. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2023 (Apr 4). Doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/kead158