Responses to Ixekizumab in Male and Female Patients with Psoriatic Arthritis: Results from Two Randomized, Phase 3 Clinical Trials

Eder, et al. sought to investigate the sex-based differences in treatment response between male and female PsA patients. They found that overall male patients had higher clinical response rates and greater improvements in the individual components of these measures.

In this analysis data was pooled from patients enrolled in SPIRIT-P1 and SPIRIT-P2. These studies evaluated ixekizumab every 4 and 2 weeks in patients with active PsA. Participants were divided into subgroups based on sex and efficacy was measured by the proportion of patients achieving either ACR20/50/70 improvements or very low disease activity defined by MDA/VLDA. They were also required to achieve DAPSA scores representing low disease activity or disease remission.

One proffered reason for this difference in response rates may be due to differences in how male and female patients report disease severity, impacting disease scores. Regardless, this knowledge may aid in the treatment of difficult-to-treat patients who have experienced a  prior inadequate response to treatment.