Rheumatoid arthritis patients initiating rituximab with low number of previous bDMARDs failures may effectively reduce rituximab dose and experience fewer serious adverse events than patients on full dose: a 5-year cohort study

Table 6 Linear regression using as dependent variable the number of serious adverse events in the cohort

Predictor	Beta	95% confidence interval	p value
Gender	0.163	− 0.151 to 0.477	0.308
Age	− 0.003	− 0.014 to 0.009	0.651
RCDI	0.033	− 0.029 to 0.095	0.294
Number of concomitant non-biologics	− 0.108	− 0.291 to − 0.075	0.246
≥ 2 previous non-biologics (yes)	0.320	0.013 to 0.627	0.041
≥ 2 of previous biologics (yes)	− 0.096	− 0.331 to 0.140	0.425
Low dose (yes)	0.003	− 0.276 to 0.274	0.995
Prednisolone > 5 mg/day for at least 2 FUs in cohort	0.689	0.373 to 1.006	< 0.0001
Past hospitalization for serious infection (yes)	0.974	0.690 to 1.259	< 0.0001

F-statistic 9.823; p < 0.0001 on 9 degrees of freedom, n = 350 included in the analysis

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