Real-World Data on Ofatumumab in Patients With MS
An expert discusses real-world data for ofatumumab (Kesimpta; Novartis), the first self-administered anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis.
Transcript below.
Patricia K. Coyle, MD: Ofatumumab [Kesimpta; Novartis] is a human anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody that's been approved since August of 2020, in the United States. This was a collaboration with IQVIA, which is an open-source pharmacy claims database, to look at what patients were being started on ofatumumab in the first 6 months after its approval. One-thousand fifteen patients with MS [multiple sclerosis] started on ofatumumab were identified, and, interestingly, the average age was about 48 years old. That's 10 years—a decade—older than in the pivotal trial. Most [patients] had mild disability on the neurological examination, and, of note, 33% were age 55 years or older and 9% were older than 65 years of age. So clearly, that was an older group than one would expect. They identified, comorbidities, as well, that were of interest.
Of these 1015 patients, about 55% had not been on another DMT [disease-modifying therapy] in the prior year. Now, we don't know for sure if they were treatment-näive, but that's a fairly long time to be disease-modifying therapy free, so you would think that this has been used in some treatment-näive patients, as well as [those who] switched from a variety of agents.
The important thing is that this is real-world data about how the agent is actually being used. I think there are some questions about [a waning of treamtent] efficacy as you get older with MS, yet, there was a significant minority subset in this group where it is being used in older MS individuals. That was interesting. It is sort of being used as a, potentially, first-line agent as well as a switch agent. That was interesting also.
