No Excess MACE Risk for JAKis in Atopic Dermatitis Analysis

AMSTERDAM — Janus kinase inhibitors (JAKis) do not appear to increase the risk for major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) among people with atopic dermatitis (AD) treated in a real-world setting, suggested the results of a large, US-based, retrospective cohort study.

This holds true even in individuals aged 50 years or older, whose age puts them at increased cardiovascular (CV) risk, said Amina El Ayadi, PhD, of the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He presented the findings at the recent European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology (EADV) 2024 Congress.

Specifically, the analysis looked at treatment with the oral JAK1 inhibitors upadacitinib (Rinvoq) and abrocitinib (Cibinqo), both approved for treating AD in the United States, and found that the relative risk for MACE, such as acute myocardial infarction, cardiac arrest, stroke, or acute deep vein thrombosis, was ≤ 1.0 compared with those not treated with a JAKi.

Similarly, the relative risk for other CV safety endpoints, such as having an abnormal ECG or pericardial effusion, was also around 1.0. There was a slight increase in the relative risk for arrhythmias, peripheral edema, angina pectoris, or heart failure, but no value went > 1.6 and CIs spanned 1.0, indicating the results lack statistical significance.

Reassurance for Dermatologists?

“This suggests that oral administration of these drugs to the patient with atopic dermatitis does not increase the risk of major adverse cardiac events, and dermatologists, based on our data, can safely consider JAK inhibitors for treating moderate to severe dermatitis, even in patients with high risk for these diseases,” El Ayadi said during a late-breaking news session at the meeting.

Yolanda Gilaberte Calzada, MD, PhD, head of the Dermatology Department at Miguel Servet University Hospital in Zaragoza, Spain, who was one of the chairs for the session, commented that this was “very good news for us.”

Gilaberte Calzada, president of the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, asked if there were any data on the duration of treatment with the two JAKis included in the analysis. El Ayadi said that this was something that would be looked at in future data analyses.

Gilaberte Calzada also observed that because the CIs were wide, with more time, “we will have more defined data.”

Analyses Overview

For the two analyses — one in the overall population of patients with AD and the other in those aged 50 years or older — electronic medical record (EMR) data from the TriNetX Research Network were used. This is a global, federated health research network that contains EMRs for more than 275 million patients from over 120 healthcare organizations, El Ayadi explained.

To perform the analyses, the research team queried the TriNetX database to find all patients diagnosed with AD via the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision code L20. They then determined if patients had been treated with JAKi or not, and specifically, with upadacitinib or abrocitinib. Those who had not received any JAKi treatment were the control population.

For the first analysis, no age-specific filter was applied. The investigators identified 1674 people with AD who had been treated with the JAKis and around 1.2 million who had not. Propensity score matching, based on age at diagnosis, biologic sex, and CV comorbidities, was performed to give a total of 1674 patients who had and 1674 who had not been treated with these medications.

In the second analysis, only those aged 50 years or older were considered; 875 patients who had received JAKi treatment were identified and around 250,000 who had not. Propensity score matching based on the same variables gave two groups of 875 people who had or had not taken a JAKi.

Queried over the age cutoff used, El Ayadi noted, “We did an analysis looking at patients 65 and older. However, we came up with lower patient numbers…We do have this data, and we did not see any significant risk.”

The study was independently supported. El Ayadi and Gilaberte Calzada reported no conflicts of interest in relation to the presented findings.

Sara Freeman is a freelance medical journalist based in London, England.