Hard-to-treat autoimmune hepatitis and primary biliary cholangitis: The dawn of a new era of pharmacological treatment

Abstract

Patients with hard-to-treat autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) or primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) are defined a posteriori as those who do not show a sufficient response or are intolerant to pharmacological treatments, thus not achieving biochemical surrogate endpoints that are associated with long-term liver-related-event-free survival. The absence of a recently harmonized definition of 'complete biochemical response within 6 months (CBR≤6M)', which is defined as the normalization of serum transaminase and IgG levels below the upper limit of normal at ≤6 months after treatment initiation, is regarded as hard-to-treat AIH. The implementation of CBR≤6M, in turn, has been facilitating clinical trials, e.g., between azathioprine and mycophenolate mofetil, to reconsider appropriate first-line steroid sparing agents, leading to a reduction in the number of hard-to-treat AIH cases. Regarding PBC, one of the disseminated definitions of hard-to-treat patients is the absence of POISE criteria, which are evaluated at 12 months with serum alkaline phosphatase and bilirubin levels, after the introduction of ursodeoxycholic acid. Hard-to-treat PBC not meeting the POISE criteria has very recently been the target population for the U.S. FDA-approved second-line drugs, elafibranor and seladelpar. In future pharmacological treatment of AIH and PBC, the primary objective for AIH is likely to focus on lowering the number of hard-to-treat patients with personalized steroid sparing treatment regimens. A challenging goal in PBC treatment is the further optimization of treatment surrogate endpoints, even to the stricter alkaline phosphatase normalization, with which an indication of second- or later-line drugs might be expanded, but could ultimately lengthen patients' long-term survival.

Keywords: Autoimmune hepatitis; Primary biliary cholangitis; Treatment.

Figure 1.

Future treatment strategies for hard-to-treat PBC from the “wait to fail approach” to the “personalized risk-stratifying approach”. LSM, liver stiffness measurement; PBC, primary biliary cholangitis; UDCA, ursodeoxycholic acid.