Analysis of clinical manifestations and spectrum of pharmacotherapy in Moscow and St. Petersburg cohorts of patients with adult-onset Still's disease

Abstract

Adult-onset Still's disease (AOSD) is a systemic autoinflammatory disease of unknown etiology characterized by clinical manifestations such as fever, non-stable maculopapular rash, arthritis and/or arthralgias and leukocytosis with neutrophilia.Objective: to analyze the spectrum of clinical manifestations of AOSD and pharmacotherapy in real clinical practice.Material and methods. A cross-sectional study included 111 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of AOSD according to the Yamaguchi criteria, who were treated in two large Russian centers from 2019 to 2022: V.A. Nasonova Research Institute of Rheumatology (Moscow) and Almazov National Medical Research Centre (Saint Petersburg).Results and discussion. We analyzed the spectrum of clinical manifestations throughout the course of the disease. The spectrum of clinical manifestations of AOSD in our study was shown to be similar to the results of other studies. It was found that the frequency of the different clinical manifestations did not differ significantly.The majority of patients (74%) in our cohort received glucocorticosteroids (GC) in combination with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) or biologic DMARDs (bDMARDs). Monotherapy with GC was used in only 9% of patients. Up to 80% of patients received methotrexate (MTX) at various stages of the disease. For the treatment of patients refractory to GC and MTX therapy, bDMARDs were prescribed (44% of cases), most frequently interleukin-6 inhibitors (34%). In the St. Petersburg cohort, 13 (31.7%) of 41 patients were taking colchicine, which enabled control of disease manifestations and a reduction in the need for GC in 9 of them.Conclusion. Thus, we can draw a preliminary conclusion about the presence of steroid dependence in patients with AOSD. Up to 79.3% of AOSD patients are forced to take GC for a long period of time, which is associated with the risk of complications. Further studies on the optimal profile of bDMARDs are needed, as well as the role of colchicine as a potential therapeutic option for certain clinical and immunological subtypes of AOSD.