
Patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) who received first-line ibrutinib had a significantly lower risk of advancing to the next line of treatment, as compared with similar patients who received chemoimmunotherapy first, according to research presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting.
The authors, led by Ruibin Wang, PhD, of Janssen Scientific Affairs, LLC, in Titusville, New Jersey, conducted the retrospective cohort study to explore real-world evidence of the efficacy of the Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor. They gathered US claims data from the Komodo Health payer-complete dataset, which includes information from more than 150 private insurance companies covering more than 140 million patients.
In all, they identified 3,570 adults with CLL or SLL who received first-line, single-agent ibrutinib and 2,391 patients who received first-line chemoimmunotherapy. Mean ages were 68 and 64 years, and the patients were 63% and 66% male, respectively. The groups’ mean scores on the Charlson Comorbidity Index were 2.87 and 3.05, respectively.
The researchers then measured the time to the next treatment, measured from the start of first-line treatment to any treatment add-on or a change to a second line of therapy. At a median follow-up of 26 months, 13% of the ibrutinib patients were documented as starting a second line of treatment. Comparatively, 26% of patients who started with chemoimmunotherapy moved to second-line treatment at a median follow-up of 31 months.
The analysis found that the probabilities of not needing second-line treatment were as follows:
- At one year: 92% with ibrutinib versus 88% with chemoimmunotherapy
- At three years: 83% for ibrutinib versus 70% with chemoimmunotherapy
- At five years: 76% for ibrutinib versus 56% with chemoimmunotherapy
The authors wrote that the results provide evidence of the real-world effectiveness of ibrutinib in an insured U.S. population.
Reference
Wang R, Ding Z, Lu X, et al. Real-world treatment outcomes in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia or small lymphocytic lymphoma who were treated with first-line single-agent ibrutinib vs. chemoimmunotherapy. Abstract #e19509. Presented at the 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting; June 2-6, 2023; Chicago, Illinois.