Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Etanercept Switching Patterns at the 2017 EULAR Annual Meeting in Madrid


There had been a study on Etanercept Switching Patterns at the 2017 EULAR Annual Meeting in Madrid. I’ve already looked at studies addressing biosimilars at the 2017 EULAR Annual Meeting [1,2]. But there is this interesting study on patients, who had been placed on etanercept biosimilar and switched back to the originator drug.

R. Alten and colleagues presented [3]: “PRELIMINARY REAL WORLD DATA ON SWITCHING PATTERNS BETWEEN ETANERCEPT, ITS RECENTLY MARKETED BIOSIMILAR COUNTERPART AND ITS COMPETITOR ADALIMUMAB, USING SWEDISH PRESCRIPTION REGISTRY”. The study is on Swedish patients, as in Sweden the switch to biosimilars has been implemented much earlier than for instance in Germany. 7% of the patients switched back to originator etanercept after an average of 43 days. Interestingly 6% of patients switched back to from etanercept biosimilar to their original drug adalimumab after an average of 57 days. “Despite the change from a brand biologic to the biosimilar is very likely made for economic reasons, the reasons for switching back to the innovator are not clear and may imply patients’ preference or clinical reasons.”

The impact of biologics is strange. To change from originator etanercept to etanercept biosimilar is understandable, but changing to adalimumab. Yet, we have to investigate the reasons for switching back to the original biologics. It is unclear if this stimulates anti-drug antibodies.


Links and References:
[3] DOI: 10.1136/annrheumdis-2017-eular.3585

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