On February 18th, a study was published in the journal Current Medical Research and Opinion, which examined US Veterans Healthcare Administration (VHA) patients who were switched from innovator infliximab to the VHA-preferred biosimilar. The study found that those who were switched from the reference product to the biosimilar were almost 3 times more likely to stop treatment and 5 times more likely to switch to another innovator biologic.

The study also found that 91% of the patients who stopped the biosimilar switched back to the originator product. “Reasons for discontinuation and switching are unknown,” investigators wrote in the study.

The study examined VHA data from January 2012 to December 2019 for adults with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA), plaque psoriasis (PsO), ankylosing spondylitis (AS), or Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis (i.e. inflammatory bowel disease [IBD]) who were treated with either innovator or biosimilar infliximab.

Read the full study here.