Mirikizumab has demonstrated superior effectiveness over placebo in inducing clinical remission and improving other outcomes in ulcerative colitis.

Mirikizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against the p19 subunit of IL-23, has demonstrated superior effectiveness over placebo in inducing clinical remission and improving other symptomatic, clinical, and endoscopic outcomes in ulcerative colitis. A pooled analysis of the phase 3 studies LUCENT-1 and LUCENT-2 revealed a direct relationship between the remission of bowel urgency and improvement in fatigue in participants with moderate to severe active UC.

Bowel urgency, a common and critical symptom in UC, has sparked interest due to its potential association with fatigue. At DDW 2023, held May 6-9 in Chicago, David Rubin, MD, presented pooled data from the LUCENT-1 and LUCENT-2 trials, in which he and his colleagues examined the relationship between bowel urgency remission, bowel urgency clinically meaningful improvement, and fatigue.

The analysis included 1,706 participants and revealed that the direct effect of bowel urgency remission at week 12 and week 40 accounted for 68.3% and 62.1% of the improvement in the fatigue score, respectively. Notably, improvements in fatigue scores correlated more strongly with bowel urgency remission than with rectal bleeding or stool frequency remission. Similar results were found for clinically meaningful improvement in bowel urgency at week 12 (91.8%) and week 40 (87.4%).

These findings support the association between bowel urgency improvement or remission and fatigue improvement. Moreover, they “provide us with a better understanding of the difficult challenge of fatigue in our patients,” remarked Dr. Rubin.

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