ArticlePharmacoepidemiology and drug safety2025
Implementing Negative Control Outcomes to Assess Comparability of Treatments for Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis.
Article in Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Association of Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists with Mortality and Aspiration Pneumonia in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes After Gastrostomy: A Target Trial Emulation Study.International journal of medical sciences · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
purposeTreatment selection is typically associated with prognosis, leading to potential confounding in comparative studies. We used negative control outcomes (NCOs) to identify potential residual confounding when comparing apremilast initiators to other psoriasis (PsO) or psoriatic arthritis (PsA) treatment initiators.
methodsAdults with PsO/PsA who initiated treatment from September 23/March 21, 2016, respectively, with apremilast, topicals, methotrexate, interleukin (IL)-17 inhibitor (i), IL-12/23i, or tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) were identified in the OPTUM Clinformatics DataMart database. Follow-up ended at treatment switch/discontinuation, NCO, end of enrollment, or September 30, 2022. NCOs addressed confounding for healthy users (wellness visit, herpes zoster vaccine, colon cancer screening, pelvic screening), functional status (accidents), and channeling. The 1-year relative risk (RR) for each NCO was estimated for all treatment comparisons using an inverse probability of treatment and censoring weighted estimator.
resultsIn PsO, potential healthy user bias was detected in apremilast vs. IL-17i initiators, with a higher likelihood of herpes zoster vaccine and colon cancer screening (RR [95% CI]: 2.01 [1.41, 2.88] and 1.42 [1.13, 1.77], respectively). Wellness visits and pelvic exams were less likely among apremilast vs. topical initiators (0.84 [0.72, 0.98] and 0.83 [0.70, 0.98], respectively). The wellness visit RR was attenuated in individuals with ≥ 1 pre-index topical prescription (0.90 [0.78, 1.04]). In PsA, minimal residual confounding was observed between apremilast and other treatments.
conclusionsEligibility criteria (prior topicals) and weighting reduced residual confounding when comparing apremilast vs. other treatments for PsO and PsA. Integration of NCOs into comparative effectiveness/safety studies of PsO/PsA treatments may help identify unmeasured confounding.
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