Re­searchers out­line an­oth­er big dis­ease tar­get for No­var­tis’ canakinum­ab as drug slash­es rate of gout flares

We’ve al­ready seen No­var­tis’ out­line of pos­i­tive da­ta un­der­scor­ing canakinum­ab’s abil­i­ty to re­duce risks for car­dio pa­tients by tamp­ing down on the in­ter­leukin-1β path­way. Now re­searchers have al­so out­lined how it may help peo­ple suf­fer­ing from gout.

The da­ta are com­ing from a sec­ondary analy­sis of the big CAN­TOS study, which No­var­tis is us­ing to make its bid for a po­ten­tial block­buster car­dio OK. In­ves­ti­ga­tors divvied up pa­tients by low, medi­um and high scores based on their serum urate lev­el, which trig­gers painful gout flares. And they found the drug slashed the rate of gout flares by more than half in all three com­pared to place­bo, with a haz­ard ra­tio start­ing at 0.40, then 0.48 and 0.45 for the high group.

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