PharmacoEconomics & Outcomes News 518 - 16 Dec 2006

Add-on omalizumab improves QOLin severe allergic asthma

Add-on therapy with the monoclonal antibodyomalizumab leads to significant and clinicallymeaningful improvements in QOL in patients withsevere allergic asthma, reports a multicentre researchteam.*

The team conducted a pooled analysis of dataobtained from six controlled studies to evaluate the QOLeffect of SC omalizumab, compared with placebo,among a total of 2548 patients.

Across all studies, there was a significantly greaterimprovement in QOL among omalizumab than amongplacebo recipients, as indicated by the mean increase inJuniper Asthma QOL Questionnaire (AQLQ) total scorebetween baseline and study endpoint (1.01 vs 0.61).The improvement from baseline was also signficant forall four of the AQLQ domains (activity limitations,emotions, symptoms, exposure to environmentalstimuli). In addition, a significantly greater proportion ofomalizumab, compared with placebo, recipientsachieved a clinically meaningful improvement in QOL(66.3% vs 52.4%), shown by the ≥ 0.5 point increasefrom baseline in AQLQ total score. Significantly moreomalizumab than placebo recipients showed clinicallymeaningful improvements in the four individualdomains.

Furthermore, significantly greater proportions ofomalizumab than placebo recipients achieved amoderate or large improvement (≥ 1 or ≥ 1.5 point) inAQLQ total scores, and in individual domain scores.* Three of the researchers were affiliated with Novartis.

Chipps B, et al. Improvement in quality of life with omalizumab in patients withsevere allergic asthma. Current Medical Research and Opinion 22: 2201-2208, No.11, Nov 2006 801056690

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PharmacoEconomics & Outcomes News 16 Dec 2006 No. 5181173-5503/10/0518-0001/$14.95 Adis © 2010 Springer International Publishing AG. All rights reserved