The Impact of Early vs. Late Biologic Initiation Among Real World Patients with Crohn’s Disease in TARGET IBD.

Challenge

Earlier biologic initiation is recommended for Crohn's disease but real-world evidence quantifying the impact of timing on hard clinical outcomes—surgery and disease progression—in a large prospective US cohort had not been established, limiting the strength of evidence for early intervention guidelines.

Solution

The TARGET-IBD registry was used to compare rates of CD surgery and disease progression across patients stratified by time from diagnosis to biologic initiation (<1 month, 1–24 months, 2–5 years), using multivariable probit and Cox proportional hazard models funded by AbbVie.

Impact

Establishing that later biologic initiation is associated with significantly higher rates of CD surgery and disease progression in real-world practice provides the evidence foundation for early intervention guidelines and reinforces the prescriber and payer case for AbbVie's advanced therapies in newly diagnosed CD.