Systems approach for classifying the response to biological therapies in patients with rheumatoid arthritis in clinical practice

article
Introduction: Biological therapies have greatly improved the treatment efficacy in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). However, in clinical practice a significant proportion of patients experience an inadequate response to treatment. The aim of this study is to classify responding and non-responding rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with biological therapies, based on clinical parameters and symptoms used in Western and Chinese medicine. Methods: Cold and Heat symptoms accessed by a Chinese medicine (CM) questionnaire and Western clinical data were collected as baseline data, before initiating biological therapy. Categorical principal components analysis with forced classification (CATPCA-FC) approach was applied to the baseline data set to classify responders and non-responders. Results: In this study, 61 RA patients were characterized using a CM questionnaire and clinical measurements. The combination of baseline symptoms (‘preference for warm food’, ‘weak tendon severity’) and clinical parameters (positive rheumatoid factor/anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibody, C-reactive protein, creatinine) were able to differentiate responders from non-responders to biological therapies with a positive predictive value of 82.35% and a misclassification rate of 24.59%. Adding CM symptom variables in addition to clinical data did not improve the classification of responders, but it did show 8.3% improvement in classifying non-responders. Conclusions: No significant differences were found between the three classification models. Adding CM symptoms to the clinical parameters in the combined model improved the classification of non-responders. Although this improvement is not significant in the current study, we consider it worthwhile to further investigate the potential of adding symptom variables for improving treatment efficacy. © 2018 Elsevier GmbH Chemicals/CAS: abatacept, 332348-12-6; adalimumab, 331731-18-1; C reactive protein, 9007-41-4; certolizumab pegol, 428863-50-7; creatinine, 19230-81-0, 60-27-5; etanercept, 185243-69-0, 200013-86-1; golimumab, 476181-74-5; rheumatoid factor, 9009-79-4; rituximab, 174722-31-7; tocilizumab, 375823-41-9
TNO Identifier
787787
ISSN
18763820
Source
European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 19, pp. 65-71.
Pages
65-71
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