The EPICURE trial is the first structured, randomized, clinical trial of nintedanib in HHT patients. Nintedanib did not lead to a reduction of at least 50% in epistaxis duration vs placebo; thus, our primary outcome was not met. However, the results did show a continuous decrease in epistaxis duration in HHT patients receiving nintedanib during treatment and the months following the end of the treatment. On the contrary, epistaxis duration in the placebo group improved before treatment but was stable during and after treatment. Thus, the high variability in epistaxis duration over time in a same patient and the improvement in epistaxis duration in the placebo group before any treatment makes it very difficult to use this symptom as a criterion for judgment in HHT, as already reported in other studies [14,15]. However, these results are encouraging and supported by the significant improvement in hemoglobin levels during treatment in the nintedanib group.
Furthermore, these results concord with other data on the use of TKI in HHT. In the literature, a prospective open label study on 7 HHT patients[9] and a retrospective study evaluating 13 HHT patients with RBC transfusion[16], highlighted the potential improvement in bleeding thanks to pazopanib in HHT patients. Pazopanib is mainly used in the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma and soft tissue carcinoma [17]. Pazopanib and nintedanib could have similar efficacy in HHT, as both are multi-tyrosine kinase inhibitors and inhibit a number of growth factors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR-1, − 2, and − 3), platelet-derived growth factor receptors (PDGFR-ɑ and − β), stem cell factor receptor (c-Kit), and (FGFR-1 and − 3). Two phase II studies evaluating pazopanib on bleeding in HHT are ongoing in North America (NCT02204371 and NCT03850964).
While treatment-related adverse events were frequent in the nintedanib group, only two patients in this group experienced severe adverse events, leading to treatment interruption in one case. The three patients who required a treatment dose reduction from 300 to 200 mg did not need to discontinue treatment, as the dose reduction decreased the intensity of the adverse events. A previous study involving over 600 patients treated with nintedanib for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis has already demonstrated manageable safety and tolerability, as well as a low impact of dose reduction on the disease[18]. Furthermore, contrary to pazopanib, nintedanib does not seem to induce high blood pressure. To reduce potential adverse effects, periodic treatment could be interesting as nintedanib seems to have a persistent effect on bleedings. Quality of life assessed using the SF36 questionnaire did not improve. This was not surprising as although this questionnaire is a widely used survey instrument that measures health-related quality of life, it is a generic tool, not specific to any particular disease and not appropriate for the impact of HHT. We recently validated a dedicated tool which unfortunately was not accessible when we started this study[19,20]. Similarly, the epistaxis severity score (ESS) was evaluated. This tool is used to assess the severity of nosebleeds in individuals with HHT[21]. This score can help healthcare professionals to assess the severity of epistaxis and monitor changes over time, but is subjective and a recent evaluation of this score demonstrated low internal consistency[22], which is in accordance with our results.
This study has many limitations. First, as we noticed in past clinical trials in HHT, there is a lack of standardized outcome measures in this disease, and developing appropriate endpoints tailored to HHT is challenging. Epistaxis in HHT is highly variable from one patient to another, but more importantly within a same patient, and epistaxis is very difficult to measure. Other criteria, such as the epistaxis severity score, are highly subjective and can be significantly influenced by the study, particularly if drug side effects compromise double-blinding. Variability in symptoms, disease progression, and severity among patients, is particularly crucial in rare diseases due to the small population. This heterogeneity can complicate the design of clinical trials, as it may be challenging to define homogeneous patient populations for study inclusion criteria. This makes it difficult to recruit enough participants for traditional clinical trials, leading to slower recruitment timelines and potentially limiting the statistical power of the study.
In conclusion, and although we did not achieve our primary outcome, we observed a significant reduction in epistaxis duration and a significant increase in hemoglobin level in HHT patients treated with nintedanib vs placebo. This result supports the efficacy of nintedanib and further studies are needed.