Amid safe­ty con­cerns, FDA grants two new JAK ap­provals — but with added warn­ings and a key la­bel change

Af­ter a post-mar­ket­ing tri­al for Pfiz­er’s Xel­janz turned up con­cern­ing safe­ty re­sults at the be­gin­ning of the year, thwart­ing the whole JAK class, the FDA is fi­nal­ly rolling out some new ap­provals — but with added warn­ings and a key la­bel change.

Both Xel­janz and Ab­b­Vie’s Rin­voq got cleared for new in­di­ca­tions on Tues­day, but on one con­di­tion: They can on­ly be tak­en af­ter a pa­tient has failed on one or more tu­mor necro­sis fac­tor (TNF) block­ers, like Hu­mi­ra or En­brel.

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