Why carry out this study?

Anti-tumor necrosis factor (Anti-TNF) therapies are expensive and represent a significant financial burden to the healthcare system; however, two-thirds of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients do not adequately respond to anti-TNF therapies, and instead experience prolonged pain, continued inflammation, and often require a higher dose of steroids.

PrismRA® is a molecular signature test that uses precision medicine to accurately predict inadequate response to anti-TNF therapies in RA patients initiating targeted therapy after failing conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs).

The study modeled the stratification of RA patients by PrismRA® into responders and inadequate responders to anti-TNF therapies and evaluated the impact on financial and clinical outcomes.

What has been learned from the study?

Response to first-line targeted DMARDs, defined as ACR50, improved from 30% in the unstratified patient cohort to over 40% in the stratified patient cohort, which resulted in cost savings per patient, reduced overall spend by 4%, and reduced ineffective biologic treatment spend by 19%.

If PrismRA® is incorporated into the clinical care of RA patients as modeled, understanding which patients will have an inadequate response to anti-TNF therapies could save more than $7 million in ineffective healthcare expenditures for every 1000 patients tested and increase observed response rates not only for those predicted inadequate responders, but for all RA patients who are starting a biologic or targeted therapy for the first time.