Doctors hail first breakthrough in asthma and COPD treatment in 50 years

[Sly Saint]

Doctors are hailing a new way to treat serious asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease attacks that marks the first breakthrough for 50 years and could be a “gamechanger” for patients.

A trial found offering patients an injection was more effective than the current care of steroid tablets, and cuts the need for further treatment by 30%.

The results, published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal, could be transformative for millions of people with asthma and COPD around the world.

Benralizumab is a monoclonal antibody that targets specific white blood cells, called eosinophils, to reduce lung inflammation. It is used as a repeat treatment for severe asthma at a low dose, but the trial found a higher single dose could be very effective if injected at the time of a flare-up.

Lead investigator Prof Mona Bafadhel, of King’s College London, said: “This could be a gamechanger for people with asthma and COPD. Treatment for asthma and COPD exacerbations have not changed in 50 years, despite causing 3.8m deaths worldwide a year combined.

“Benralizumab is a safe and effective drug already used to manage severe asthma. We’ve used the drug in a different way – at the point of an exacerbation – to show that it’s more effective than steroid tablets, which is the only treatment currently available.”

Doctors hail first breakthrough in asthma and COPD treatment in 50 years

 

[rvallee]

Those biomedical ideologs strike again!

The comically mismatched race between biomedical breakthroughs, tens of thousands and counting, and psychobehavioral breakthroughs, still zero, continues. Making the future of medicine being more about the psychobehavioral stuff all that more ridiculous.