Study: Most Patients with PMR Aren’t Getting Steroid-Sparing Agents in First 2 Years

“In PMR, unlike many of the other conditions we treat as rheumatologists, we can actually talk about drug-free disease remission and theoretically talk about disease-modifying agents,” Dr. Sattui concludes.⁷ “Use of glucocorticoid-sparing agents could potentially open the door for this, and this needs to be a focus of trial and treatment. This will also require the need for earlier assessment of all individuals with a diagnosis of PMR.”

Dr. Owen

Claire Owen, MBBS (Hons), PhD, deputy director of rheumatology at Austin Health and senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, calls the study a welcome addition to the PMR literature, given the large size of the patient cohort and the focus on management by rheumatologists, rather than primary care providers.

The finding that “a minority of patients [is] being prescribed a steroid-sparing agent in the first 24 months following their PMR diagnosis speaks to how underresearched and misunderstood this common rheumatic disease has been,” Dr. Owen says. “This work is a reminder that we may be underutilizing cheaper, readily available synthetic DMARDs in a more recently diagnosed PMR population. Future research efforts should therefore not be limited to novel therapies but also revisit improved utilization of drugs like methotrexate in well-designed clinical trial settings.”

Katie Robinson is a medical writer based in New York.

References

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