Minimal Impact of the <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 Pandemic on Disease Activity and <scp>Health‐Related</scp> Quality of Life in Patients With Ankylosing Spondylitis Receiving Bimekizumab: Exploratory Analyses From a Phase 2b <scp>Open‐Label</scp> Extension Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients with inflammatory rheumatic diseases, such as ankylosing spondylitis (AS), has been variable. Here, we assess disease activity and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) through the pandemic in patients with AS. METHODS: In the open-label extension (OLE) of the phase 2b BE AGILE study, patients with AS received 160 mg of subcutaneous bimekizumab every 4 weeks. We assessed Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Score with C-reactive protein (ASDAS-CRP), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) and Ankylosing Spondylitis Quality of Life (ASQoL) scores in the OLE immediately before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (September 2019 to April 2021). RESULTS: A total of 232 patients remained in the BE AGILE OLE and were included in this post hoc study at the start of the analysis period (September 1, 2019); 12 patients had a COVID-19 treatment-emergent adverse event, and no cases resulted in death. The number of missed bimekizumab doses due to COVID-19 (11 doses) was minimal, and missed assessments remained low (≤5%) compared with the prepandemic period. Mean ASDAS-CRP (1.8), BASDAI (2.4), and ASQoL scores (2.8) in the OLE were low at pre-pandemic baseline and remained stable at 1.7 to 1.8, 2.2 to 2.4, and 2.0 to 2.8, respectively, across successive 3-month periods immediately before and during the pandemic. ASDAS-CRP, BASDAI, and ASQoL stability was consistent across major study countries. CONCLUSION: Disease activity and HRQoL remained stable during the COVID-19 pandemic in patients with AS receiving bimekizumab in the BE AGILE OLE, with no indication of negative effects on these outcomes.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".