Look­ing to face down ma­jor league ri­vals, No­var­tis posts some im­pres­sive longterm da­ta on Cosen­tyx

It’s al­ways good to be the leader. It’s even bet­ter if you can promise to stay out front.

No­var­tis proved that point again with a fresh batch of longterm da­ta to back up its block­buster IL-17A drug Cosen­tyx, which has a group of new ri­vals nip­ping at its heels.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors for the phar­ma gi­ant turned up at the An­nu­al Eu­ro­pean Con­gress of Rheuma­tol­ogy in Madrid to of­fer ev­i­dence that 80% of anky­los­ing spondyli­tis pa­tients achieved a key ef­fi­ca­cy point at three years. A sep­a­rate two-year post hoc analy­sis showed that more than half of all pso­ri­at­ic arthri­tis pa­tients on the drug al­so achieved a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in pain. And 28% were free of pain, a ma­jor out­come for a group that was uni­ver­sal­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing mod­er­ate to se­vere pain.

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