THURSDAY, April 6, 2023 (HealthDay News) -- For women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), perimenopausal status is associated with reduced remission compared with premenopausal status, and sex hormone use is associated with higher remission, according to a study published in the February issue of Rheumatology.

Dala N. Daraghmeh, from the University of South Australia in Adelaide, and colleagues pooled individual participant data from five phase 3 clinical trials in which RA patients were treated with tocilizumab and/or conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs to examine whether factors influencing female sex hormones are associated with treatment efficacy. Data were included for 4,474 female participants, of whom 62.9, 4.5, 22.8, and 9.2 percent were postmenopausal, early postmenopausal, premenopausal, and perimenopausal, respectively. Of these, 7.8, 6.4, 25, and 11.4 percent, respectively, were taking exogenous sex hormones.

The researchers found that compared with premenopausal status, perimenopausal status was associated with reduced remission (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.78) in the pooled analysis. Significantly higher remission was seen in association with sex hormone use (adjusted hazard ratio, 1.20).

"The use of exogenous sex hormones was associated with an increased likelihood of remission, with the impact most apparent in perimenopausal and early postmenopausal women, such that the lower remission likelihood in perimenopausal women appeared to be reversed by the use of exogenous sex hormones," the authors write.

This publication is based on research using data from Hoffmann-La Roche that has been made available through Vivli.