Safety And Efficacy Of Baricitinib In Elderly Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis

### Key messages#### What is already known about this subject?#### What does this study add?#### How might this impact on clinical practice?Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can begin at any age, but the prevalence increases with age. Active disease usually persists for years; many patients have initial symptoms after age 60.1 2 Elderly patients with RA often have comorbid diseases managed with multiple concomitant medications with the potential for changes in drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, which complicate therapeutic decisions.3 Moreover, there is a perception that medications may be less effective than in younger individuals and adverse effects more common and severe.4 5 One report suggests an increased risk in elderly patients for adverse events (AE) leading to discontinuation of biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARD) in the treatment of RA, while other reports have not seen these effects.4 5 An analysis of Medicare beneficiaries with RA suggested that older patients were less likely to receive conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (csDMARD) and therefore may not receive optimal treatment.6 Other reports have shown that responsiveness of elderly patients with RA to methotrexate (MTX) or tumour necrosis factor (TNF) inhibitors+MTX was similar to that observed in …