POS0100 COMBINATION THERAPY WITH TWO BIOLOGIC/TARGETED SYNTHETIC DMARDS IN 1260 PATIENTS WITH IMMUNE MEDIATED INFLAMMATORY DISEASES. A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW FOR CURRENT LANDSCAPE IN EFFICACY AND SAFETY
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Immune mediated inflammatory diseases (IMID) include: rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA), axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA), Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC) and psoriasis (PsO). Although, biologic (b) and targeted synthetic (ts)DMARDs are effective, still approximately 60% of the patients are unable to reach low disease activity status. Combination therapy with two b/ts DMARDs, with a different mechanism of action, has been used in the treatment of IMID. Regarding efficacy, results are conflicting, while some safety concerns have also been raised. Objectives: In this systematic literature review (SLR), we aimed to present the current knowledge about efficacy and safety of combination therapy in IMID. Methods: The SLR was conducted according to the patient/intervention/comparator/outcome (PICO)-structure; P: adult patients (≥18 years old) with RA, PsA, AxSpA, CD, UC or PsO. I: receive, concomitantly or alternate, two b/ts DMARDs, C: not applicable, O: efficacy (all outcomes as examined by the authors of the primary study) and safety (all adverse outcomes reported). The SLR has been registered in PROSPERO (CRD42024583183). Three databases were searched, namely: PubMed, Scopus, Epistemonikos from inception until 1/6/2024 utilising the following keywords: "inflammatory arthritis" OR "rheumatoid arthritis" OR "psoriatic arthritis" OR "axial spondyloarthritis" OR "non radiographic axial spondyloarthritis" OR "inflammatory bowel disease" OR "crohn's disease" OR "ulcerative colitis" OR "psoriasis" AND "dual therapy" OR "bispecific therapy" OR "bimodal Therapy" OR "dual treatment" OR "bispecific treatment" OR "bimodal treatment" OR "combination biologic". Inclusion criteria were as defined in PICO and exclusion were: non-English literature, studies related to paediatric cases (<18 years-old), editorials, reviews, congress abstracts. Case reports and case series were included. Two blinded reviewers assessed the titles and abstracts and subsequently screened the full-text articles and proceeded to the data extraction using a structured proforma sheet. In case of disagreement, a third researcher was consulted. To estimate the risk of bias, Newcastle-Ottawa (NOS) for observational studies, Revised Cochrane RoB tool for randomized trials (RoB2) for RCTs and "Joanna Briggs Institute" critical appraisal checklist for case reports and case series were used. Results: Initially, 2,038 records were identified and after the elimination process (Figure 1), 71 studies were finally included (7 RCTs, 11 cohort studies, 22 case series, 31 case reports). A total of 1260 patients, previously ineffectively treated with one or more b/tsDMARDs, were included. The following categories were reported: TNFi+IL/23i (21 studies/245 patients), TNFi+IL/17i (3 studies/66 patients), JAKi+any b/tsDMARDs (9 studies/55 patients), Vedolizumab+JAKi (6 studies/14 patients), Vedolizumab+TNFi (17 studies/163 patients), Vedolizumab+IL/23i (14 studies/48 patients), Vedolizumab+ IL/17i (1 study/ 2 patients), Vedolizumab+ Ocrelizumab (1 study/1 patient)|, Apremilast+any b/tsDMARDs (14 studies/87 patients), Abatacept+any b/tsDMARDs (3 studies/289 patients), Rituximab+any b/tsDMARDs (5 studies/219 patients), Anakinra or Canakinumab+ any b/tsDMARDs (2 studies/166 patients) IL/17i+IL/23i (2 studies/4patients), TNFi+TNFi (1patient). Approximately 72.3% of observational studies scored 7 or higher in NOS, indicating a low RoB. Similarly, for RCTs, 85.7% were estimated to have a low RoB. On the JBI checklist, 72.7% of case series scored ≥8 ‘Yes' answers, while 65% of case reports scored ≥7. Combination of TNFi with IL/23i led to favorable outcomes in about 40-60% of patients with PsA, axSpA or IBD, with safety profile being comparable to what is known from the approval studies of these drugs. TNFi and IL/17i combination therapy led to major clinical improvement in approximately 65% of patients with PsA/axSpA (understudied safety profile), whereas, based on an RCT, this strategy was safe in RA, but the additional benefit appeared to be limited (Figure 2). For strategies combining JAKi with bDMARDs, significant improvement was seen in about 50% and 60-80% of the patients with inflammatory arthritis (RA, PsA, axSpA) and IBD, respectively, without important safety issues being raised. In IBD, combination of vedolizumab with TNFi has led to improvement in 30-50% of the cases with acceptable safety profile. This figure appears to be even higher in the combination of vedolizumab with ustekinumab, although more data are needed for c. difficile infections in these patients. Data for combination of vedolizumab with JAKi are too few to interpret. Rituximab has been given in combination with TNFi with acceptable safety profile in large number of patients. Additional efficacy was not well demonstrated with 30% of the patients achieving ACR20 at week24. Apremilast has been given with bDMARDs mainly in patients with PsO leading to skin improvement without additional safety concerns. Efficacy in musculoskeletal manifestations though is unknown. Combination of bDMARDs with abatacept or anakinra, does not seem to have any benefit in RA, while is under-investigated in other diseases. Finally, few data exist for other combinations (e.g. IL/17i with IL/23i). Conclusion: There are numerous b/tsDMARDs combinations that offer additional improvement in about half of the treatment refractory patients, across indications, without raising safety issues. With most of the studies coming from IBD and axSpA, data are more robust for TNFi/IL/23i, JAKi/bDMARD and vedolizumab/TNFi combination therapy. REFERENCES: NIL . Figure 1Prisma flowchart Figure 2TNF- and IL/17-inhibitor combination therapy in immune mediated diseases Acknowledgements: NIL . Disclosure of Interests: Angeliki Zoi Lignou: None declared, Konstantinos D Vassilakis: None declared, Xenofon Baraliakos Abbvie, Alphasigma, Amgen, BMS, Cesas, Celltrion, Galapagos, Janssen, Lilly, Moonlake, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche, Sandoz, Springer, Stada, Takeda, UCB, Zuellig, Abbvie, Celltrion, Janssen, Moonlake, Novartis, Petros P. Sfikakis AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Novartis and Pfizer, AbbVie, Amgen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Celgene, Eli Lilly, Janssen, Novartis and Pfizer, Jacques-Eric Gottenberg Abbvie, BMS, Chugai, Galapagos, Gilead, Lilly, MSD, Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi, UCB, George E. Fragoulis Abbvie, Novartis, Pfizer, UCB, Lilly, AEnorasis, GSK, Boheringer Ingelheim, Johnson and Johnson, Demo, Vianex. © The Authors 2025. This abstract is an open access article published in Annals of Rheumatic Diseases under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Neither EULAR nor the publisher make any representation as to the accuracy of the content. The authors are solely responsible for the content in their abstract including accuracy of the facts, statements, results, conclusion, citing resources etc.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.006 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".