INFECTIONS ASSOCIATED WITH BIOLOGIC THERAPY: A CLINICAL META-ANALYSIS STUDY

With the popularity of biologics, treatment for several inflammatory diseases has improved significantly. Biologics are a group of drugs obtained from biological sources that primarily function by suppressing part of the host immune system. However, this process comes at a cost, as it has been reported that the use of biologics carry a major risk in the form of tuberculosis. To verify this claim, a meta-analysis of biologic therapy vs. placebo therapy was designed to test biologics of different inflammatory diseases and check for tuberculosis as their side effect. This test included psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis. It was found that biologics used in treating these diseases were mainly responsible for the spread of tuberculosis as a side effect. By mining different databases for literature mentioning biologics that qualify clinical trials and checking for heterogeneity for each study, primary measures were tested for each disease to determine the spread of tuberculosis when treated with these compounds. Meta-analyses were conducted for the study of each disease separately. It was found that for ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and ulcerative colitis  the null hypothesis Hο:µ=0 can be rejected. All primary measures showed statistically significant results for the spread of tuberculosis infection. Therefore, it can be concluded that biologics used to treat these inflammatory diseases may be spreading infections in the form of tuberculosis.