Objective: To evaluate the cardiovascular safety of abatacept (ABA) versus tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with and without underlying cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Methods: We identified RA patients with and without baseline CVD who initiated ABA or TNFi by using data from 2 large US insurance claims databases: Medicare (2008-2013) and Truven MarketScan (2006-2015). After stratifying by baseline CVD, ABA initiators were 1:1 propensity score (PS) matched to TNFi initiators to control for > 60 baseline covariates. Cox proportional hazards regression estimated the HR and 95% CI for a composite endpoint of CVD including myocardial infarction, stroke/transient ischemic stroke, or coronary revascularization in the PS-matched cohorts. HR from 2 databases were combined through an inverse variance-weighted fixed-effects model.
Results: We included 6102 PS-matched pairs of ABA and TNFi initiators from Medicare and 6934 pairs from MarketScan. Of these, 35.3% in Medicare and 14.0% in MarketScan had baseline CVD. HR (95% CI) for composite CVD in the overall ABA group versus TNFi was 0.67 (0.55-0.81) in Medicare and 1.08 (0.83-1.41) in MarketScan with the combined HR of 0.79 (0.67-0.92). Among patients with baseline CVD, the HR (95% CI) was 0.71 (0.55-0.92) in Medicare and 1.02 (0.68-1.51) in MarketScan, with the combined HR of 0.79 (0.64-0.98).
Conclusion: In this large cohort of publicly or privately insured patients with RA in the United States, ABA was associated with a 20% reduced risk of CVD versus TNFi. While this observational study is subject to potential residual confounding, our results were consistent in patients with baseline CVD.
Keywords: BIOLOGIC DISEASE-MODIFYING ANTIRHEUMATIC DRUGS; CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES; COMPARATIVE SAFETY RESEARCH; RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS.