Omalizumab Demonstrates Long-Term Effectiveness, Safety in Maintaining Asthma Control

Omalizumab demonstrated long-term effectiveness and safety in maintaining asthma control and improving quality of life, according to the results of a prospective multicenter noninterventional study published in Advances in Therapy.

Researchers conducted an observational study to investigate the effectiveness and safety of long-term omalizumab therapy on asthma control and quality of life in patients with severe allergic asthma under real-life conditions using 2 questionnaires, the asthma control questionnaire (ACQ)-6 and the mini-asthma quality of life questionnaire (AQLQ).

Of the 153 patients who participated in the study, 92.2% had been receiving prior omalizaumab therapy for a mean of 2.9 years. Omalizumab slightly decreased the mean ACQ-6 score from 2.0 at baseline to 1.7 at the end of the 3-year treatment period (difference: -0.18; P =.340). Among treatment-naive patients, post-hoc analyses of ACQ-6 showed a decrease in mean ACQ-6 from 2.7 at baseline to 1.4 after 3 years of omalizumab treatment. The mini-AQLQ increased from 4.5 at baseline to 4.7 after 3 years (difference: 0.26; P =.186). In addition, physician-assessed global evaluation of treatment effectiveness was reported as excellent or good for most patients (67.46%-84.69%). More than two-thirds of patients had no severe exacerbations, there were no unexpected safety signals during the study period, and no tachyphylaxis was observed.

“In conclusion, despite most patients receiving prior omalizumab treatment for approximately 3 years, there was no decrease in effectiveness or safety over the subsequent 3 years during this study,” stated the authors. They added that, “This supports the long-term use of omalizumab in maintaining asthma control and quality of life.”

Disclosure: This clinical trial was supported by Novartis Pharma GmbH, Germany. Please see the original reference for a full list of authors’ disclosures.

Reference

Schreiber J, Sauerbeck IS, Mailänder C. The long-term effectiveness and safety of omalizumab on patient- and physician-reported asthma control: a three-year, real-life observational study [published online November 18, 2018]. Adv Ther. doi:10.1007/s12325-019-01135-w