NEW YORK (Reuters Health)—Ixekizumab improves signs and symptoms in patients with radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (ankylosing spondylitis), according to results from the COAST-W study.
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December 2018“Ankylosing spondylitis is a chronic and debilitating disease, and I have a large number of patients who have failed TNF inhibitors,” says Dr. Atul Deodhar from Oregon Health and Science University, Portland.
“There’s a need for more options, specifically for this difficult-to-treat patient population. If ixekizumab is approved for the treatment of ankylosing spondylitis, it would give physicians another option for their patients,” he tells Reuters Health by email.
Axial spondyloarthritis is commonly treated with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors, but as many as 40% of patients do not achieve adequate disease control or symptom relief with TNF inhibitors. Ixekizumab is a monoclonal antibody that selectively targets IL-17A, which has been implicated in the immunopathology of axial spondyloarthritis.