BACKGROUND: Pharmacokinetic (PK)-guided dosing of factor VIII (FVIII) concentrates is widely recommended to personalise the treatment of haemophilia A patients. However, it is well known that commonly applied target FVIII plasma levels do not necessarily improve bleeding outcomes in all individuals. It is therefore desirable to adapt treatment based on individual bleeding risk rather than only factor levels. Unfortunately, there is currently no reliable clinical marker that reliably discerns between patients with low or high bleeding risk.

OBJECTIVES: We explore the possibility of using repeated time-to-event (RTTE) models to quantify individual bleeding risk by combining (historical) information on annual bleeding rates and PK, without requiring the measurement of novel clinical markers.

METHODS: We improve upon existing RTTE models using data from 264 severe haemophilia A patients followed during three clinical trials. The model classifies patients into low, medium, or high bleeding frequency cohorts to reduce between-patient variability and predicts bleeding risk for specific categories of bleeds rather than pooled bleeding information.

RESULTS: The resulting model has high accuracy, with >70% of predictions being within one bleed of the true observed bleeding rate. We demonstrate how the proposed model can be used to compare treatment not only based on the achievement of specific factor levels and factor concentrate consumption, but also on projected bleeding outcomes. Importantly, this approach does not require the measurement of novel or unconventional biomarkers, facilitating its adoption in routine clinical practice.

CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method may present an exciting new treatment paradigm for haemophilia A patients.