India Pharma Outlook Team | Tuesday, 21 October 2025
On Monday AbbVie proclaimed that its newest arthritis medication, Rinvoq, outperformed the company’s established best-selling product Humira in a head-to-head clinical study.
These findings represent a substantial achievement for AbbVie as it pivots from a reliance on Humira which lost patent exclusivity in the US last year to its newer immunology franchise.
In the study of 492 rheumatoid arthritis patients, 43.3% of patients taking Rinvoq reported improvement, vs. 22.4% of patients taking Humira, thus meeting the primary endpoint of the trial.
Rinvoq also met the second endpoint by having 28.4% of the patients develop no visible signs or symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) compared to 14.5% of the Humira group. All patients were also on methotrexate as a well-established therapy for autoimmune diseases.
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Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic autoimmune disease that affects more than 17 million people globally, causing inflammation of the joints, thickening of the tissues, and destruction of the bone.
"These positive results strengthen the growing body of evidence supporting the benefits of switching to a new mechanism of action," said Andrew Anisfeld, vice president, global medical affairs, immunology at AbbVie.
With the sales of Humira rapidly declining due to the entry of less expensive biosimilars, AbbVie is relying on Rinvoq and Skyrizi to maintain its growth levels. The company has forecasted that the two drugs will attain more than $31 billion in the overall sales, by 2027, to help keeps the company as a leader in the global immunology market.
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