Skip to main content

Incidence of Serious Infections and Design of Utilization and Safety Studies for Biologic and Biosimilar Surveillance

    Details
    Basic Details
    Date
    Entity
    BBCIC
    Type
    Publication
    Description

    There is a need for postmarketing evidence generation for novel biologics and biosimilars. The objective was to assess the feasibility, strengths, and limitations of the Biologics and Biosimilars Collective Intelligence Consortium (BBCIC) Distributed Research Network (DRN) to examine the utilization and comparative safety of immune-modulating agents among patients with autoimmune diseases. We conducted a retrospective cohort study among patients enrolled in health insurance plans participating in the BBCIC DRN between January 1, 2006, and September 30, 2015. Eligible patients were adult (≥18 years) new users of a disease-modifying nonbiologic and/or biologic agent with a prior diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), other inflammatory conditions (psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis), or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Follow-up started at treatment initiation and ended at the earliest outcome occurrence (serious infection); treatment discontinuation; switching, death, disenrollment, or end of the study period. The study leveraged the FDA Sentinel System infrastructure for data management and analysis; descriptive statistics of patient characteristics and unadjusted incidence rates of study outcomes during follow-up were calculated.

    Contributors
    Author(s)

    Jie Zhang, Gayathri Sridhar, Charles E. Barr, Bernadette Eichelberger, Catherine M. Lockhart, James Marshall, Jerry Clewell, Neil A. Accortt, Jeffrey R. Curtis, Cynthia Holmes, Cheryl N. McMahill-Walraven, Jeffrey S. Brown, Kevin Haynes