Ustekinumab For the Treatment of Giant Cell Arteritis: Comment on the Article by Matza et al.

We read with great interest the paper of Matza et al. (1) reporting on their prospective, open-label, single-arm, single-centre trial which was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab (UST) in combination with prednisone in patients with active GCA (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT02955147). The authors concluded that UST is an ineffective treatment for GCA since only 23% of the 13 patients enrolled achieved the primary endpoint (i.e. absence of relapse through week 52 and normalization of the erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C-reactive protein), which is inferior to previous results obtained in patients treated with tocilizumab (TCZ) (2).