News

The European Union has expanded its approval of the rheumatic disease therapy UCB’s Cimzia t0 include women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. UCB’s treatment becomes the first anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) therapy to cover these patients. The label change was approved by the European Medicines Agency. TNF is a pro-inflammatory cytokine, or molecule…

Improved diagnosis and management of fatigue and depression among people with ankylosing spondylitis can help reduce the risk of job loss in this population, researchers suggest. The study, “Association of work instability with fatigue and emotional status in patients with ankylosing spondylitis: comparison with healthy controls,” was…

Novartis recently initiated a Phase 3 clinical trial comparing its FDA-approved therapy Cosentyx (secukinumab) with GP2017 — an adalimumab biosimilar — in ankylosing spondylitis (AS) patients. The trial, called SURPASS (NCT03259074), is a head-to-head study testing the benefit of Cosentyx to the biosimilar GP2017 in reducing the progression of spinal…

Pain in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) may stem from factors other than spinal inflammation, researchers said after discovering that the main subjective factors of disease activity were associated with the use of opioid medication. Researchers found that particularly chronic opioid use did not relate to any objectively measurable…

Low-radiation dose computed tomography (ldCT) scans are more sensitive in detecting the progression of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) than commonly used radiographs, a study suggests. Published in the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, the study showed that ldCTs combined with a specific scoring measure can provide more detailed and…

UCB biopharma’s experimental therapy bimekizumab (CDP-4940, UCB-4940) significantly improved ankylosing spondylitis (AS) symptoms after 12 weeks of treatment in the Phase 2b BE AGILE trial (NCT02963506). Although no cure has been discovered yet for AS, disease symptoms can be lessened with drugs that decrease pain and inflammation.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved Pfizer’s Ixifi (infliximab-qbtx), a biosimilar to Janssen Biotech’s Remicade, for all indications approved for the reference product, including ankylosing spondylitis. Like Remicade, Ixifi is a chimeric human-murine monoclonal antibody against tumor necrosis factor (TNF). TNF is involved in…

Patients with axial spondyloarthritis (axSpA) who quit smoking have lower disease activity, better physical function, and a better quality of life than those who smoke, a study reports. Researchers call for targeted interventions to promote smoking cessation in patients with axSpA. AxSpA is a group of disorders that includes ankylosing…

Novartis has initiated a Phase 4 clinical trial to evaluate the impact of increasing the dose of Cosentyx (secukinumab) to 300 mg. in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) who did not achieve symptom remission after 16 weeks of treatment with 150 mg. The ASLeap trial (NCT03350815)…

Close to a fifth of bowel disease patients have joint conditions like spondyloarthritis and peripheral arthritis, a Texas study reports. The research, “Characterization and prevalence of spondyloarthritis and peripheral arthritis among patients with inflammatory bowel disease,” was published in the journal Clinical and Experimental Gastroenterology.