Objectives Our objective was to compare the cardiovascular safety of tocilizumab and other biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (bDMARD) in rheumatoid arthritis using a network meta-analysis (NMA). Methods A systematic literature search through May 2018 identified randomized controlled trials (RCT) or observational studies (cohort only) reporting cardiovascular outcomes of tocilizumab (TCZ) and/or abatacept (ABA) and/or rituximab (RTX) and/or tumor necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) in rheumatoid arthritis patients. The composite primary outcome was the rate of major adverse cardiovascular outcomes (MACE, myocardial infarction (MI), peripheral artery disease (PAD) and cardiac heart failure (CHF)). Results 19 studies were included in the NMA, including 11 RCTs and 8 cohort studies. We found less events with RTX (5.41 [1.70;17.26]. We found no difference between TCZ and other treatments. Concerning MI, we found no difference between TCZ and csDMARD (4.23 [0.22;80.64]), no difference between TCZ and TNFi (2.00 [0.18;21.84]). There was no difference between TCZ and csDMARD (1.51[0.02;103.50] and between TCZ and TNFi (1.00 [0.06;15.85]) for stroke event. With cohorts and RCT NMA, we found no difference between TCZ and other treatments for MACE (0.66 [0.42;1.03] with ABA, 1.04 [0.60;1.81] with RTX, 0.78[0.53;1.16] and 0.91 [0.54;1.51] with csDMARD), but the risk of myocardial infarction was lower with TCZ compared to ABA (0.67 [0.47;0.97]). We lacked data to compare TCZ and other bDMARD for stoke and MI. Not enough data was available to perform a NMA for CHF and PAD. Conclusions Despite an increase in cholesterol levels, TCZ has safe cardiovascular outcomes compared to other bDMARD.

Drug-related problems associated with the DOACs occur quite commonly among hospitalized patients. Although these DRPs were considered to be of minor severity, prescribing protocols to support better prescribing should be disseminated to reduce the risk to patients. Renal function and body weight data should be mandatory on prescriptions to allow cross-checking.

Background Endoscopic mucosal resection (EMR) with snare is the recommended technique to resect non-invasive colorectal neoplastic lesions between 10 and 30 mm in diameter. The objective of EMR is to resect completely the neoplastic tissue en bloc and preferably with free margins (R0), avoiding recurrences. Anchoring the tip of the snare in the submucosa is a technical trick that allows snare sliding to be reduced and larger pieces to be caught. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of anchoring-EMR (A-EMR). Methods This was a retrospective analysis of A-EMR procedures for lesions of diameter between 10 and 30 mm (endoscopic evaluation) performed consecutively in four French centers between May 2017 and January 2018. A-EMR was routinely performed for all EMR using Olympus conventional snares (10 or 25 mm). The primary outcome was evaluation of the proportion of R0 resections. Results A total of 141 A-EMR procedures were performed by 10 operators. Mean lesion size was 19.8 mm. Anchoring was feasible in 96.5 % of cases. There were 81.6 % en bloc resections and 70.2 % R0 resections, with the percentage of procedures decreasing with increasing lesion size (82.8 % < 20 mm, 55.3 % 21 – 30 mm, and 50.0 % > 30 mm, P = 0.002). Complete perforations closed endoscopically occurred in 3/141 cases (2.1 %); none occurred in lesions < 20 mm in size (0 /87). Conclusion The A-EMR technique appears to be promising with a high proportion of R0 for lesions of 10 – 20 mm in size without any perforations. It could also offer an alternative to endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), or to hybrid techniques to reach R0 for lesions between 20 and 30 mm in size.

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A worldwide increase in the frequency of testing for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) levels has been observed over the last years. Our aim was to measure the evolution in the number of vitamin D assays performed in France from 2008 to 2013 and to investigate some of the drivers that may explain this increase. Patients within the representative 1/97th sample of the French health insurance system reimbursement database (EGBS database) who had at least one 25OHD or 1-25(OH)2D assay between 2008 and 2013 were included. Trends over time in number of vitamin D assays were analysed globally and per year in a multivariable Poisson regression model with GEE. Among the 639,163 patients of the EGBS database, 118,509 (18.5%) had at least one vitamin D assay over the 6-year study period. Among the individuals tested, 52.1% had only one test. The number of vitamin D assays (25OHD or 1-25(OH)2D) increased 7.5-fold from 9,620 in 2008 to 81,641 in 2013. This study confirms the rapid and dramatic increase in vitamin D assays prescriptions and shows that this is mostly due to a global increase of the proportion of patients tested rather than an increase in repetition of tests in some individual patients.

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Background Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a life-shortening genetic condition that usually affects several organs and involves significant treatment burden. Adherence to medication is important for successful CF management. Objective To describe medication adherence according to age, therapeutic class, and pharmaceutical form in adults and children followed in four regional CF centers in France. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study with non-transplanted patients followed in two adult and two pediatric centers during 2015 who were covered by the French National Health Insurance (NHI). Sociodemographic, clinical, hospitalization, and prescription data were collected from patient medical records. Medication dispensations were extracted from the regional French NHI database. Adherence was calculated over 12 months using continuous medication availability (CMA) accounting for dose adjustments and hospitalizations. Drug-specific CMA was computed in R with the AdhereR package for each medication prescribed more than 3 months, which was averaged to obtain a composite CMA score (cCMA) for all treatments and per therapeutic class as well as pharmaceutical form for each patient. Results A total of 228 patients were included. The number of chronic medications increased with age ( r =0.50, p <0.001): a median of 7 medications per patient were prescribed. The mean±SD cCMA was significantly different between age groups ( p =0.0098): it was 0.71±0.20 for the 0–5 years age group, 0.73±0.16 for 6–11 years, 0.64±0.17 for 12–17 years, 0.57±0.23 for 18–25 years, and 0.65±0.20 for the over 25 years age group. cCMA varied significantly according to pharmaceutical forms: the mean±SD cCMA was 0.70±0.21 for oral medications and 0.54±0.28 for inhaled medications ( p <0.001). Conclusion This study suggests that adherence to medication regimens in CF patients remains suboptimal and varies substantially between age groups and pharmaceutical forms. These variations in adherence should be considered when developing effective strategies to improve adherence.