[Head-to-head trials in rheumatoid arthritis]

BACKGROUND

Head-to-head studies are important to select the optimal treatment in terms of efficacy and side effect profiles when several drugs are available.

AIM OF THE WORK

This article describes all studies comparing the use of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in head-to-head studies or in which a DMARD was at least included in an active comparison arm.

RESULTS

A total of 23 studies comparing DMARDs were identified. These included comparisons of Janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors with methotrexate and with adalimumab as well as the oral surveillance study.

DISCUSSION

There are already an exceptionally large number of head-to-head studies in RA, both for comparisons of efficacy and safety of DMARDs. Nevertheless, more such comparative studies are needed, for example to clarify whether adverse events of tofacitinib observed in the oral surveillance study are specific to the JAK 1/JAK 3 inhibitor or are a class effect of all JAK inhibitors.