An injectable drug for the skin disorder eczema is also effective against severe asthma, a study released Monday (May 21) said, pointing to broader uses for a costly class of drugs known as biologics."The editors said they "envision.That means at least three other biologics - drugs which have some kind of natural source, whether from humans, animals or microorganisms, and are manufactured using biotechnology - could also be candidates for use against asthma. So far, we do not have a drug for asthma that changes the course of the disease," he added."This drug not only reduced severe symptoms of asthma, it improved the ability to breathe," said co-author Mario Castro, a doctor and professor at the Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis. Our patients deserve better than that.They include mepolizumab, reslizumab, and benralizumab - all anti-inflammatory treatments approved by US regulators in the last few years."How will we decide which of these treatments should be used now?

Without more data, these decisions are likely to be driven by the marketing arms of the plastic injection molding machine various entities that produce these drugs.For patients with high numbers of a specific type of white blood cell, called eosinophils, asthma attacks were cut by two-thirds."That's important because these patients have a chronic disabling disease that worsens over time with loss of lung function.Now, the anti-inflammatory has been tested in a randomized, controlled trial of more than 2,000 patients with moderate to severe asthma.It also improved patients' lung function, said the findings released at the 2018 American Thoracic Society Conference in San Diego, and published online in The New England Journal of Medicine. a cottage industry based on analysis and re-analysis of the current data," which would be "flawed"... The drug's maker, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, set the price at US$37,000 per year.

IMPLICATIONS FOR WIDER USEThe study's results make it likely that dupilumab will be approved for use against severe asthma, said an accompanying editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.Otherwise, "we will end up prescribing the treatment with the most effective marketing."This new class of treatments is a clear advance in the treatment of asthma," wrote the journal editors Jeffrey Drazen and Michael Harrington.Five patients who received dupilumab and three patients who were given a placebo died during the study, but researchers said those patients all had multiple severe medical conditions and the drug was not deemed to have caused their deaths.Instead, they called for "pragmatic, head-to-head trials of these four new asthma-treatment biologics".When 200-300 milligrams were given by injection every two weeks for a year, it cut potentially life-threatening asthma attacks almost in half when compared to a placebo.".Dupilumab (Dupixent) was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017.Side effects included pain and swelling at the injection site.But none offer a true cure for asthma, only a reduction in symptoms, and more research is needed, they warned