Patient and Physician Expectations of Add‐On Treatment With Golimumab for Rheumatoid Arthritis: Relationships Between Expectations and Clinical and Quality of Life Outcomes

OBJECTIVE: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) management involves improving clinical outcomes and quality of life (QOL). Golimumab is used as add-on therapy for patients who have failed disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs). This GO-MORE subanalysis investigated relationships between patient and physician expectations and outcomes. METHODS: GO-MORE was an open-label, multinational, prospective study in biologic agent-naive patients with active RA despite DMARD treatment. Patients received 50 mg subcutaneous golimumab monthly for 6 months. At baseline and month 3, patients rated treatment expectations for the following 3 months using 5-point scales (where 1 = good and 5 = poor). Outcomes were compared among expectation tertiles: most positive, intermediate, and least positive. At baseline and month 3, physicians predicted patient disease state 3 months later. RESULTS: At baseline, 3,280 efficacy-evaluable patients with moderate (21.3%) or high (78.7%) disease activity had mean ± SD disease duration of 7.6 ± 7.9 years, mean ± SD Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) disability index (DI) score of 1.44 ± 0.67, and mean ± SD EuroQol 5-domain (EQ-5D) score of 0.42 ± 0.33. Patients reported high treatment expectations (mean 1.43); 95.9% expected golimumab to be better than current treatment. Patients with fewer DMARD failures, higher disease activity, shorter disease duration, younger age, and female sex reported higher expectations (P < 0.05 for all). After 6 months, patients with the most positive expectations had higher remission rates (P < 0.0001) and greater HAQ DI (P < 0.0001) and EQ-5D (P < 0.0001) score improvements. At baseline, physicians expected 29.6% and 59.2% of patients to attain remission and low disease activity, respectively, after 3 months. CONCLUSION: Patients had high expectations for golimumab treatment. Patients with more positive expectations had greater remission rates, improvements in function, and QOL.