Drug Effective for JIA-Associated Eye Disease

A monoclonal antibody appears to be effective in treating a disease that causes serious eye problems in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).

A UK team reporting at the 2015 American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in San Francisco, CA, said it found that adalimumab (Humira/AbbVie) helped patients who had active JIA-associated uveitis, despite stable methotrexate treatment. The children, ages 2 to 18 years, were randomized to either adalimumab or placebo.

Athimalaipet Ramanan and colleagues at University Hospitals Bristol and other UK institutions said they stopped the trial for efficacy after 90 patients had been enrolled and randomized.

There were adverse events seen in most of the patients getting the drugs but the authors said they were "consistent with the known adalimumab profile" thought 15 serious adverse events (mostly infection) caused 3 patients to withdraw.

"This trial, the largest of its kind to be conducted in JIA-associated uveitis, provides evidence of efficacy of adalimumab treatment used in addition to methotrexate in this population," they wrote. Their abstract will be presented on Nov. 10.