To compare the risk of serious infections requiring hospitalization in patients with psoriasis (PsO) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) initiating ustekinumab versus other biologics or apremilast.
In this multi-database cohort study, we identified patients with PsO/PsA who initiated therapy with adalimumab, apremilast, certolizumab, etanercept, golimumab, ixekizumab, secukinumab, or ustekinumab between 2009 and 2018. The primary outcome measure was hospitalizations due to serious infections, which included bacterial, viral, or opportunistic infections. We estimated hazard ratios (HRs) comparing each study drug to ustekinumab after applying propensity score fine stratification weights for confounding control in each database. Database-specific weighted HRs were combined by meta-analysis.
We identified 123,383 patients with PsO/PsA who initiated one of the study drugs. During a total of 117,744 person-years of follow-up, 1,514 serious infections occurred with a crude incidence of 1.29 per 100 person-years. After propensity score fine stratification and weighting, the incidence rates of serious infection among ustekinumab initiators ranged from 0.59 to 0.95 per 100 person-years. Compared with ustekinumab, the combined weighted HRs (95% confidence interval [95% CI]) for serious infections were 1.66 (95% CI 1.34-2.06) for adalimumab, 1.42 (95% CI 1.02-1.96) for apremilast, 1.09 (95% CI 0.68-1.75) for certolizumab, 1.39 (95% CI 1.01-1.90) for etanercept, 1.74 (95% CI 1.00-3.03) for golimumab, 2.92 (95% CI 1.80-4.72) for infliximab, 2.98 (95% CI 1.20-7.41) for ixekizumab, and 1.84 (95% CI 1.24-2.72) for secukinumab.
Other biologics and apremilast were associated with a 1.4- to 3-times higher risk of hospitalization for serious infections in PsO/PsA patients when compared to ustekinumab; this finding should be considered in the safety profile of these therapies when selecting appropriate treatment regimens in patients with PsO/PsA.