CHICAGO — A post-market study of the retina drug faricimab (Vabysmo), focusing exclusively on minority populations often underrepresented in clinical trials, revealed that Hispanic and Latino patients had more severe disease at the start but experienced the greatest improvements in vision and retinal anatomy after treatment. The findings were presented at the 2024 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
The ELEVATUM study assessed the effects of faricimab, a dual-action drug targeting excessive vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiopoietin-2 pathways in retinal diseases. The study included 59 African American and 56 Hispanic/Latino patients with previously untreated diabetic macular edema. Faricimab was approved by the FDA in 2022.
At the start of the study, Hispanic and Latino patients demonstrated worse retinal disease compared to African American participants. Their average best corrected visual acuity was 59.2 letters, slightly lower than the 62.2 letters recorded for African American patients. Additionally, their central subfield thickness, a critical biomarker for retinal disease severity, measured 491.1 microns compared to 467.4 microns in African American patients. Thicker retinas indicate more advanced disease.
Hispanic and Latino patients also presented with more severe diabetic retinopathy (DR) at baseline. Among them, 39.3% had moderately severe to severe nonproliferative DR, compared to just 13.6% of African American patients. Additionally, 16.1% of Hispanic and Latino participants had proliferative DR, a more advanced form of the disease, compared to 8.5% in the African American group.
