Nathan den Broeder, MSs: Treating Rheumatoid Arthritis with Lower Doses of Rituximab

Nathan Broeder, MSs, PhD candidate, Department of Rheumatology, Sint Maartenskliniek, Radboud Institute for Health Sciences, Radboudumc, presented the findings of his study at the American College of Rheumatology 2021 Convergence.

The study, titled "Long-term Effectiveness of Ultra-Low Doses of Rituximab in Rheumatoid Arthritis", examined the outcomes of taking the disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) at a variety of doses for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

"First of all," den Broeder said, "we saw that almost all of the patients remained on rituximab, only 7% switched to another DMARD. Second of all, we saw that the disease activity remained very low on average so almost all patients were in low disease activity."

These results were encouraging because the aim of the study was to determine the optimal dose of rituximab for treating rheumatoid arthritis.

"And probably the most surprising result was that this was done with 30% of the patients on 200mg per 6 months," den Broeder explained, "40% of the patients on 500mg per 6 months, and only 30% of the patients actually needed the 1000mg dose, so in short we showed that with low disease activity you can still go quite a bit lower than the registered dose, which is actually 2000mg."

The findings show that 70% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis can use a lower dose than the 1000mg that's currently used in practice.