SAN FRANCISCO — Omalizumab, when added to asthma treatments, reduced the number of rescue bursts of corticosteroids in patients allergic to cat dander, Marc Massanari, Pharm.D., said in a poster presentation at the International Conference of the American Thoracic Society.
The omalizumab patients needed 25% fewer steroid puffs than those on placebo and had a 100% increase in forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1), compared with a 33% increase in placebo patients, both statistically significant differences.
The results came from a pooled population of 2,236 patients enrolled in five placebo-controlled clinical trials of omalizumab. Dr. Massanari and his colleagues, all of whom are employed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp., East Hanover, N.J., focused on the 1,589 patients with moderate to severe and persistent IgE-mediated asthma and who showed sensitivity to cat dander. Of those, 811 received omalizumab and 778 received placebo administered subcutaneously every 2 or 4 weeks.
The omalizumab patients also had significant decreases in rescue beta-agonist puffs and showed significant improvements in all domains of the Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire. Novartis and Genentech Inc. supported the study