Olivier Fakih, MD, MPH: Implications of Findings on Comorbidities of Axial Spondyloarthritis

During this HCPLive interview segment, Olivier Fakih, MD, MPH, continued to discuss his team’s findings on difficult-to-treat axial spondyloarthritis, elaborating on their implications for future research.

Fakih’s work was presented at the American College of Rheumatology 2023 Convergence in San Diego, California. He is known for his work with Hôpital Nord Franche-Comté in Trévenans, France.

He was asked about any surprising elements of his team’s findings presented at ACR 2023.

“Some results we found were not very surprising, like with female sex, as we already know that there is quite a difference between male and female in spondyloarthritis,” Fakih explained. “But some results were maybe a little bit more surprising, especially depression. We knew that depression was associated with higher disease activity and associated with more switches in treatment. But when you look at the odds ratio we found in our study in multivariate analysis, it was the comorbidity which had the higher odds ratio, and even more than female sex.”

Fakih explained some of the value to clinicians in the data his team was able to identify.

“So, these are only preliminary results, as it's only the beginning of the study of difficult-to-treat spondyloarthritis and as I said earlier, there is no conceptual definition yet,” Fakih said. “But I think it's significant in looking very precisely at the comorbidities of the patients. I think it's very important, both at diagnosis and at follow-up, to check for comorbidities and maybe address the patient to other doctors to look for comorbidities and detect some commonalities.”

The quotes used in this summary were edited for clarity.