P905 Symptomatic remission and IUS improvements in a multi-national real-world cohort of UC patients treated with Upadacitinib - First results from the IBD-DACH study EUROPE

Background Upadacitinib (UPA) is an oral, reversible and selective Januskinase-inhibitor (JAKi) that was approved for the treatment of several immune-mediated inflammatory diseases, including moderate to severe ulcerative colitis (UC) (1). While the efficacy of UPA has been demonstrated in clinical trials in UC, real-word (RW) evidence on the effectiveness and safety of UPA in UC remains scarce (2). Here, we shed light on the clinical and sonographic results after 2 and 8 weeks of UPA induction in a large, multinational RW cohort of UC patients. Methods EUROPE is an ongoing, prospective, non-interventional, multi-country study in patients with active UC who initiate therapy with UPA. The study assesses the early clinical effectiveness and the predictive value of early disease improvements including sonographic parameters for the long-term outcome after 52 and 104 weeks. For this interim analysis, we report clinical and sonographic results at baseline (BL), week 2 (2W) and week 8 (8W) of 124 UC patients with a visit after 8W until August 2023. For 75 patients, sonographic BL data for the most affected bowel segment was available. Results Of the 124 UC patients, most were male (60.5%, n = 75) with a median age and disease duration of 37.5 years (27.5 – 50.9) and 6.58 years (2.40–12.13). Almost half of all patients had a pancolitis (48.4%, n = 60) The vast majority of patients was bio-experienced (85.5%, n = 106), a third had been exposed to ≥ 3 biologicals (28.2%, n = 35). At BL, patients had a median bowel wall thickness (BWT) of 5.0 mm (3.8-7.0) in the sigmoid colon. It was the most affected segment in 44.4% of patients (n = 55). Disease activity per paMayo score was 3.0 (2.0-5.0) points, with 72.6% (n = 90) and 38.8% (n = 48) of patients reporting ≥ 3 more stools than usual/day and blood in most stools or bleeding without stool, respectively. At 2W after UPA induction, stool frequency and rectal bleeding substantially improved as reflected by the rate of patients in symptomatic remission significantly increasing from 16.9% (n = 21) at BL to 43.5% (n = 54) at 2W and to 64.5% (n = 80) at W8 (both p < 0.001 vs. BL, fig.1). BWT was reduced significantly as early as 2W (n = 48; p < 0.001) and was ≤ 3mm in more than half of all patients. Considering the overall population, 156 patients were included in the safety analysis. Of these, 23.7% (n = 37) experienced an adverse event of which most were non-serious. Conclusion In this first interim analysis of the EUROPE study, UPA treatment in UC was associated with early clinical and sonographic improvement, with most patients achieving symptomatic remission and/or normalization of BWT by week 8 of treatment. 1-SmPC Upadacitinib 2-Danese, Vermeire et al. Lancet. 2022 Jun 4;399(10341):2113-2128