A new analysis that reviewed data from 2 studies in patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) has found a benefit to initiating selexipag therapy within 6 months of diagnosis.
The study, published in ERJ Open Research, found reduced disease progression in newly diagnosed patients in the TRITON and GRIPHON clinical trials who were on active therapy with selexipag compared with placebo.
“In a recent post hoc analysis from GRIPHON, selexipag treatment within 6 months of diagnosis reduced the risk of disease progression by 55% compared with placebo,” the authors wrote. “This analysis further investigated the signal observed in TRITON for improved long-term outcomes by pooling PAH patients from the GRIPHON and TRITON clinical trials and assessing the impact of initiating selexipag within 6 months of diagnosis on disease progression and survival.”
Continue Reading
The TRITON trial evaluated changes in pulmonary vascular resistance as well as PAH disease progression with the use of selexipag as triple oral therapy vs double oral therapy, and the researchers found a benefit to newly diagnosed patients in terms of delayed disease progression.
Read more about PAH therapies
The GRIPHON trial found that selexipag therapy reduced disease progression by 40% among patients with PAH with and without background therapy. Researchers also found a 55% reduction in disease progression compared to placebo in patients who were initiated on the therapy within 6 months of diagnosis.
The pooled dataset included 649 patients, a larger sample size than most PAH studies to date. Selexipag was found to consistently and significantly reduce disease progression when started early and as part of a triple therapy regimen.
The authors note that the confidence intervals for the study results were wide, and there were variations in clinical practices between the studies as well as differences in the countries and sites included; thus, the results should be interpreted with caution.
Reference
Coghlan JG, Gaine S, Channick R, et al. Early selexipag initiation and long-term outcomes: insights from randomised controlled trials in pulmonary arterial hypertension. ERJ Open Res. 2023;9:00456-2022. doi:10.1183/23120541.00456-2022
