Efficacy and Safety of Omalizumab Treatment Over a 16-Year Follow-Up: When a Clinical Trial Meets Real-Life.

Purpose: Treatment of severe asthma has made great strides thanks to rapid progress in understanding immune response and inflammatory pathways. This led to the advent of the first biologic for severe allergic asthma (SAA), omalizumab. Although the long-term efficacy and safety of omalizumab has been confirmed, increasingly longer follow-up data can further reinforce this evidence and potentially provide new ones, for example on any loss of efficacy or the appearance of unexpected side effects.

Real world effectiveness of benralizumab on respiratory function and asthma control.

Background: Biological drugs have been recognized as a breakthrough in the treatment of severe refractory asthma. This retrospective real-life observational study aims to evaluate the effect of add-on benralizumab on lung function, exacerbation rate, oral corticosteroids (OCS) reduction and asthma control questionnaire (ACQ) score after 52-weeks.

Methods: In this observational study, a cohort of 18 patients with severe eosinophilic asthma (SEA) according to the ERS / ATS and GINA 2020 classifications, with reference to the Pulmonology Unit of the Azienda USL - IRCCS, Reggio Emilia, Italy, were enrolled from 1 September 2019 to 31 August 2020.

A Real-World Evaluation of Clinical Outcomes of Biologicals and Bronchial Thermoplasty for Severe Refractory Asthma (BIOTERM).

Background: The important progress made on asthma phenotyping encouraged the development of new therapeutic strategies, such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and bronchial thermoplasty (BT). The aim of this study is to compare patients diagnosed with severe refractory asthma (SRA) who are currently being treated with omalizumab, mepolizumab, benralizumab or BT and to evaluate the efficacy of these treatments over a 12-month observation period.

Methods: Overall, 199 consecutive patients with SRA were included.

Efficacy and steroid-sparing effect of benralizumab: has it an advantage over its competitors?

Severe refractory asthma is characterized by a higher risk of asthma-related symptoms, morbidities, and exacerbations. This disease also determines much greater healthcare costs and deterioration in health-related quality of life (HR-QoL). Another concern, which is currently much discussed, is the high percentage of patients needing regular use of oral corticosteroids (OCS), which can lead to several systemic side effects.

Near-fatal asthma responsive to mepolizumab after failure of omalizumab and bronchial thermoplasty.

Severe asthma affects between 5% and 10% of patients with asthma worldwide and requires best standard therapies at maximal doses, but there is a subgroup of patients refractory to all treatments. We share a case report of a 53-year-old woman with a history of severe allergic asthma that progressively worsened over the years despite the best therapy. She had been hospitalized 35 times, including nine admissions to the respiratory intensive care unit due to severe exacerbations.

Real-life Efficacy of Omalizumab After 9 Years of Follow-up.

Omalizumab is frequently used as add-on treatment to inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) and long-acting β2-agonists in patients with suboptimal control of severe asthma. Patients with severe asthma will typically require chronic treatment, although due to the limited amount of data available there are still some concerns about the safety and efficacy of long-term therapy with omalizumab. Herein, in an extension of a previous 4-year study, we report disease-related outcomes of 8 patients with severe persistent allergic asthma who have been followed for a total of 9 years in a real-life setting.

Clinical audit on diagnostic accuracy and management of respiratory failure in COPD.

Background: The aim of the study was to evaluate the adequacy of diagnosis and management of respiratory failure (RF) in COPD.

Methods: Retrospective analysis of the hospital discharge forms of COPD patients hospitalized for RF from January 2007 to June 2008. Using the clinical audit tool, the primary end point was the accuracy of RF diagnosis.

Clinical and pharmacoeconomic aspects of omalizumab: a 4-year follow-up.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the stability of the effectiveness of omalizumab as add-on treatment in 11 patients with severe persistent allergic asthma followed for 4 years. Secondary outcomes were safety and economic impact, in terms of use of healthcare resources.

Methods: This retrospective study was designed to analyse a series of patients with severe allergic asthma treated with omalizumab.

Long-term benefits of omalizumab in a patient with severe non-allergic asthma.

Introduction: Currently, omalizumab is indicated for the treatment of patients with severe allergic uncontrolled asthma despite optimal therapy.

Case Presentation: We studied a 52-year-old man who has been suffering from severe non allergic steroid-resistant asthma with increased levels of total IgE and a lot of comorbidity. After a 3 years long treatment with omalizumab, he presented a significant improvement in disease control in terms of hospitalizations, exacerbation, quality of life and lung function with good safety profile.

Both bronchial and alveolar exhaled nitric oxide are reduced with extrafine beclomethasone dipropionate in asthma.

Exhaled nitric oxide (NO) is a noninvasive marker of airway inflammation. Beclomethasone dipropionate (BDP) is the only inhaled corticosteroid (ICS) available as both extrafine and nonextrafine hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) pressurized metered-dose inhaler (pMDI) formulation. The present study was designed to evaluate whether the different patterns of lung deposition of two HFA BDP formulations are associated with a different effect on bronchial and alveolar NO.