Continued therapy with adalimumab in patients with nonradiographic axial spondyloarthritis was associated with better maintenance of remission than withdrawing adalimumab in the ABILITY-3 study. Of the 305 enrolled patients who achieved sustained remission after 28 weeks of open-label adalimumab treatment (40 mg subcutaneously every other week), 152 were randomly assigned to continue adalimumab treatment and 153 received placebo instead. At the end of the 40-week double-blind period, more patients in the placebo group had experienced a flare than in the adalimumab group (70% versus 47%).
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Landewé, R. et al. Efficacy and safety of continuing versus withdrawing adalimumab therapy in maintaining remission in patients with non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis (ABILITY-3): a multicentre, randomised, double-blind study. Lancet 392, 134–144 (2018)
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McHugh, J. Testing the ABILITY to withdraw adalimumab. Nat Rev Rheumatol 14, 500 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-018-0068-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41584-018-0068-7