Guselkumab Has Potential to Treat Psoriatic Arthritis

Guselkumab may be a viable treatment alternative for biologic-exposed and biologic-naïve patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) or psoriasis (PsO), findings from a study published in Dermatologic Therapy found.

Patients (N=90) with PsA treated with guselkumab from 2019 through 2022 at 14 centers in Spain were included in this retrospective, multicenter, observational study conducted by the Spanish Psoriasis Group. Outcomes at 12, 24, and 52 weeks were evaluated.

Patients’ median age was 55 (range, 36-87) years, 61% were women, 46% were obese, 84% had plaque PsO, 69% had peripheral arthritis, 34% had axial involvement, 93% had received previous biologic agents, the median number of previous biologic agents was 3 (range, 0-8), Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) score was 7 (range, 0-25), and Disease Activity Psoriatic Arthritis (DAPSA) score was 13 (range, 0-67), respectively.

Compared with baseline, absolute PASI score decreased from 10.5 to 4.8 at week 12, 1.9 at week 24, and 1.3 at week 52 (all P <.0001). The percentage of patients with PASI less than 2 was 52% at week 12, 77% at week 24, and 88% at week 52, respectively.

Among the subset of patients with important articular activity at baseline (48%), DAPSA score decreased from 29 at baseline to 20 at week 12, 16 at week 24, and 14 at week 52 (all P <.001), respectively.

In a subgroup analysis, similar results were observed among the subset of patients who were biologic naïve and the subset of patients who were biologic agent-experienced.

The adverse event rate was 2%, in which 1 patient had an injection site reaction and 1 reported headache. No patients discontinued guselkumab due to axial inefficacy.

The major limitation of this study was the retrospective nature which could lead to missing or partial data.

These data indicated to investigators that guselkumab safely and effectively treated PsA and PsO and support its use in both biologic-experienced and biologic-naïve patients. The study confirmed the viability of the treatment as participants were, “a more challenging and ‘real’ population, composed of a high percentage of multi-failure PsA patients.”