Medicalwriters / Science Source
Patients under the care of the U.S. Veterans Affairs who were older, non-white and had more comorbidities were less frequently given biologic initiation therapy to treat their rheumatoid arthritis (RA), according to a recent study.
Researchers sought to identify predictors of greater use of biologic therapies, as well as factors associated with persistent use of glucocorticoids, in patients with RA. Results of the large cohort study, which reviewed a decade of data, were published in The Journal of Rheumatology.1
“What stands out is that there are big differences in how [physicians] treat older and sicker versus younger and healthier patients,” says study author Michael George, MD, MSCE, a rheumatologist and instructor of medicine at Penn Medicine, a division of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.