Clinical features of polymyalgia rheumatica patients in Japan: Analysis of real-world data from 2015 to 2020.

OBJECTIVES: To assess clinical features in patients with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR) in Japan by ICD-10 code assignment.

METHODS: Demographics, treatment patterns, and concomitant diseases (identified using ICD-10 code only) in patients who were assigned the PMR ICD-10 code M35.3 at least once between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2020 were aggregated from a nationwide medical information database owned by the Health, Clinic, and Education Information Evaluation Institute.

RESULTS: The cumulative number of patients with PMR was 6325 (mean [SD] age, 74.3 [11.4] years); male: female, 1:1.3. Most patients were >50 years (96.5%) with >33% between 70-79 years. Glucocorticoids were prescribed in ~54% of patients within 30 days of PMR code assignment. All other drug types were prescribed in <5% of patients. Hypertension, diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoporosis were noted in >25% and giant cell arteritis in 1% of patients. During the study period, 4075 patients were newly assigned the PMR code and 62% were prescribed glucocorticoids within 30 days.

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first retrospective real-world data analysis describing clinical features of PMR in a large patient population from Japan. Further studies of prevalence, incidence, and clinical features are warranted in patients with PMR.