Australian recommendations on tapering of biologic and targeted synthetic disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs in inflammatory arthritis

Australian recommendations on perioperative use of disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs in people with inflammatory arthritis undergoing elective surgery

Disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs) are effective treatments for inflammatory arthritis but carry an increased risk of infection. For patients undergoing surgery, there is a need to consider the trade-off between a theoretical increased risk of infection with continuation of DMARDs perioperatively versus an increased risk of disease flare if they are temporarily withheld. We used the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation methodology to develop recommendations for perioperative use of DMARDs for people with inflammatory arthritis undergoing elective surgery. The recommendations form part of the National Health and Medical Research Council-endorsed Australian Living Guideline for the Pharmacological Management of Inflammatory Arthritis. Conditional recommendations were made against routinely discontinuing conventional synthetic and biologic (b) DMARDs in the perioperative period but to consider temporary discontinuation of bDMARDs in individuals with a high risk of infection or where the impact of infection would be severe. A conditional recommendation was made in favour of temporary discontinuation of targeted synthetic DMARDs in the perioperative period.

Withdrawal of MTX in rheumatoid arthritis patients on bDMARD/tsDMARD plus methotrexate at target: a systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the effect of methotrexate (MTX) withdrawal on disease activity and remission rate in patients at target after treatment with bDMARDs/tsDMARDs plus MTX.

METHODS

We searched the PubMed, EMBASE, and CENTRAL databases for all RCTs on MTX withdrawal in patients with rheumatoid arthritis at target after combination therapy from inception to 2022-3-7 in order to extract data, including the change from withdrawal in DAS28 at the end point; proportion of low disease activity (LDA) assessed by DAS28, SDAI or CDAI; proportion of remission assessed by DAS28, SDAI, CDAI or ACR/EULAR Boolean remission. The Cochrane Q test and I2 test were used to assess heterogeneity, and random-effects models were used for data synthesis. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42022303891).

RESULTS

Six articles were included for qualitative and quantitative analysis, all of which were noninferior RCTs involving 1430 patients (734 in the withdrawal group and 696 in the continuation group). Compared with continuing combination therapy, tapering off or discontinuing MTX increased DAS28 by 0.20 (95% CI 0.09-0.32, I2 = 0%) and decreased the percentage of patients with LDA assessed by DAS28 to < 3.2 (RR 0.88 [0.80, 0.97] I2 = 0%). However, MTX withdrawal did not decrease remission rates assessed by DAS28, SDAI, CDAI or ACR/EULAR Boolean remission (RR 0.90 [0.81, 1.01], 0.93 [0.77, 1.11], 0.90 [0.74, 1.11], 0.95 [0.70, 1.29], respectively).

CONCLUSION

Withdrawing MTX slightly increases the RA disease activity in patients treated at target with bDMARDs/tsDMARDs plus MTX and has limited effects for patients with deep remission.