Photo Credit: Liudmila Chernetska

More than 80% of patients with alopecia areata who responded to baricitinib at week 52 maintained their response until week 152 in the BRAVE-AA trials.

More than 80% of patients with alopecia areata (AA) who responded to therapy with baricitinib at week 52 in the BRAVE-AA trials maintained their response until week 152. Regrowth of eyebrows and eyelashes showed even further improvement after three years.

The oral, selective JAK1/2 inhibitor baricitinib is the only approved therapy by European Authorities for AA following the positive results of the phase 3 BRAVE-AA1 (NCT03570749) and BRAVE-AA2 (NCT03899259) trials. In these studies, researchers randomized 1,200 adults with at least 50% hair loss in the Severity of Alopecia Tool (SALT) score to receive either 2 mg or 4 mg of baricitinib once daily or a placebo. In the 4 mg group, 34% achieved a SALT score less than or equal to 20, and 24.9% scored less than or equal to 10.

As severe AA tends to run a chronic course that often requires long-term therapy, there was a clear rationale to test the long-term efficacy of baricitinib in a long-term extension of the BRAVE-AA studies. Maryanne Senna, MD, presented the 3-year results from BRAVE-AA1 and BRAVE-AA2 at the AAD 2024 Annual Meeting.¹ She discussed treatment results after three years for week 52 responders, defined as patients treated with 4 mg and 2 mg baricitinib who achieved a SALT score less than or equal to 20 at week 52.

In total, 89.1% of the participants treated with the high baricitinib dose and 83.6% treated with the low dose maintained a SALT score less than or equal to 20 at week 152. Moreover, the proportion of patients achieving full or nearly full eyebrows and eyelashes increased from week 52 through week 152: 70% in the 4 mg baricitinib group and 68.4% in the 2 mg group had full or nearly full eyebrows at 52 weeks; this percentage increased to 80% in the 4 mg group and to 66.7% in the 2 mg group at week 152. At 52 weeks, 70.8% of patients treated with 4 mg and 68.3% of patients treated with 2 mg baricitinib had full or nearly full eyelashes, these percentages increased to 80.9% and 78.1% at week 152, respectively.

Medical writing support was provided by Karin Drooff, MPH.
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