Concomitant use of intravenous methylprednisolone to increase retention rate of abatacept in rheumatoid arthritis

To investigate whether concomitant use of intravenous methylprednisolone (IVMP) with Abatacept (ABA) contributes to earlier remission and higher drug retention rates. This was a retrospective cohort study to assess the retention rate of ABA in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients treated at a single center in Japan from January 2010 to May 2017. Patients were divided into an ABA monotherapy group and ABA IVMP group. IVMP (40 mg) was administered with the first three consecutive doses of ABA. ABA retention rates were evaluated using Kaplan–Meier analysis. Hazard ratios for the drug retention rate were also calculated as the sensitivity analysis. A total of 59 seropositive RA patients were analyzed. Twelve patients were treated with ABA IVMP, and 47 patients were treated with ABA monotherapy. The overall ABA retention rate was 76.3% at 24 weeks. The retention rates were 91.7 and 72.3% in the ABA IVMP and ABA monotherapy groups, respectively. Log-rank analysis revealed no statistical difference between the two groups (p = 0.17). The sensitivity analysis showed that the hazard ratio of IVMP was 2.9–3.7 in three models, although there was no statistical significance. Safety analysis revealed that no patients discontinued ABA because of adverse events in the ABA IVMP group, while 7/47 (14.9%) discontinued the drug in the ABA monotherapy group. In this real life study, ABA, concomitantly used with IVMP, showed numerically higher retention rates without additional safety signals, although there was no statistical significance. Concomitant use of IVMP may help RA patients achieve earlier remission.