Relation of therapies for ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis to risk of myocardial infarction: a nested case control study

BACKGROUND: Risk of myocardial infarction (MI) is elevated in ankylosing spondylitis and psoriatic arthritis (AS/PsA) compared to the general population. We evaluated the risk of MI related to the use of tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) and other therapies in AS/PsA. METHODS: We conducted a nested case-control study using 1994–2018 data from OptumLabs® Data Warehouse, which includes de-identified medical and pharmacy claims, laboratory results, and enrollment records for commercial and Medicare Advantage enrollees. The database contains longitudinal health information on enrollees and patients, representing a diverse mixture of ages, ethnicities and geographical regions across the United States. Assessing AS/PsA separately, MI cases were matched to 4 controls by sex, age, diagnosis year and insurance type. We evaluated treatment within 6 months prior to MI including NSAIDs (AS referent), disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARDs; PsA referent) and TNFi alone or in combinations. We evaluated the relation of treatment categories to MI risk using conditional logistical regression adjusting for confounders. RESULTS: Among 26,648 AS subjects, there were 237 MI cases and 894 matched controls. Among 43,734 PsA subjects, there were 404 cases and 1596 controls. In AS, relative to NSAID use, the adjusted odds ratio (aOR) for MI among TNFi only users was 0.85 (95% CI 0.39–1.85) and for DMARD only users was 1.04 (95% CI 0.65–1.68). In PsA, relative to DMARD use, the aOR among TNFi only was 1.09 (95% CI 0.74–1.60). Combination therapies also had no effect. CONCLUSIONS: Among AS/PsA, no combination of therapies appeared to be protective or harmful with regards to MI. Future studies should capture more AS and PsA patients and include longer term follow up to further investigate this question. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41927-021-00207-1.