Baseline characteristics of tofacitinib-treated and tocilizumab-treated patients with RA, grouped by the status of previous bDMARD use, before propensity score matching
| bDMARD-naïve patients (n=215) | Previous bDMARD-failure patients (n=249) | |||||||
| Tofacitinib (n=93) | Tocilizumab (n=122) | P value* | ASD† | Tofacitinib (n=154) | Tocilizumab (n=95) | P value* | ASD† | |
| Baseline characteristics | ||||||||
| Age, years, mean (SD) | 63.6 (13.7) | 64.8 (13.6) | 0.52 | 0.088 | 66.7 (11.5) | 61.6 (12.5) | 0.001 | 0.43 |
| Male sex, number (%) | 20 (21.5) | 39 (32.0) | 0.093 | 0.20 | 33 (21.4) | 18 (18.9) | 0.75 | 0.051 |
| RA duration, years, mean (SD) | 8.8 (10.4) | 7.8 (8.9) | 0.47 | 0.10 | 13.9 (9.7) | 11.2 (8.8) | 0.030 | 0.29 |
| Advanced stage‡, number (%) | 31 (33.3) | 33 (27.0) | 0.37 | 0.11 | 97 (63.0) | 50 (52.6) | 0.11 | 0.17 |
| Anti-CCP-positive, number (%) | 78 (83.9) | 97 (79.5) | 0.48 | 0.095 | 135 (87.7) | 83 (87.4) | 1.00 | 0.007 |
| RF-positive, number (%) | 81 (87.1) | 99 (81.1) | 0.27 | 0.15 | 128 (83.1) | 81 (85.3) | 0.72 | 0.049 |
| CDAI, mean (SD) | 22.7 (9.6) | 23.0 (10.4) | 0.82 | 0.030 | 23.1 (10.2) | 22.6 (9.9) | 0.73 | 0.050 |
| High CDAI (>22), number (%) | 38 (40.9) | 55 (45.1) | 0.58 | 0.070 | 76 (49.4) | 39 (41.1) | 0.24 | 0.14 |
| Concurrent MTX use, number (%) | 63 (67.7) | 75 (61.5) | 0.39 | 0.11 | 84 (54.5) | 66 (69.5) | 0.023 | 0.25 |
| Concurrent PSL use, number (%) | 27 (29.0) | 64 (52.5) | 0.001 | 0.41 | 42 (27.3) | 44 (46.3) | 0.003 | 0.33 |
*Comparisons of each of the baseline characteristics between the tofacitinib and tocilizumab groups, separately in bDMARD-naïve patients and bDMARD-failure patients, using the independent-measures t-test for continuous variables and the χ2 test for categorical variables.
†ASD of <0.1 indicates that the baseline characteristic was well balanced between the two treatment groups (tofacitinib vs tocilizumab).
‡Advanced stage was defined as Steinbrocker radiological stages III and IV.
anti-CCP, anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide antibodies; ASD, absolute standardised difference; bDMARD, biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug; CDAI, clinical disease activity index; MTX, methotrexate; PSL, prednisolone; RA, rheumatoid arthritis; RF, rheumatoid factor.