A UK study has shown that a drug currently used to treat severe asthma could be re-purposed for use in emergency settings, potentially representing the first new treatment for asthma attacks in 50 years.
The phase 2 ABRA study, led by scientists from King’s College London and sponsored by the University of Oxford, found that a single dose of AstraZeneca’s benralizumab could be more effective when injected at the point of exacerbation compared to currently used steroid tablets.
The trial randomised patients at high risk of an asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) attack to receive benralizumab injection, standard-of-care prednisolone, or benralizumab plus prednisolone.
Results published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine showed that respiratory symptoms of cough, wheeze, breathlessness and sputum were found to be better with benralizumab after 28 days, and that four times fewer patients in the benralizumab group failed treatment compared to prednisolone after 90 days.
The research, conducted with support from AstraZeneca UK, also showed that treatment with benralizumab took longer to fail, meaning fewer visits to a doctor or hospital for patients, and the drug was associated with an improvement in quality of life.
Benralizumab is already authorised under the brand name Fasenra as a maintenance treatment for severe eosinophilic asthma and is designed to target specific white blood cells called eosinophils.
More than one billion people globally are affected by asthma and COPD, a chronic respiratory disease, with eosinophilic exacerbations accounting for up to 30% of COPD flare-ups and almost 50% of asthma attacks.
Steroids such as prednisolone can reduce inflammation in the lungs but have severe side effects, such as diabetes and osteoporosis, and many patients fail treatment.
Lead investigator of the trial, Mona Bafadhel, King’s Centre for Lung Health said the findings could be a “game changer for people with asthma and COPD”.
She said: “Benralizumab is a safe and effective drug already used to manage severe asthma. We’ve used the drug in a different way – at the point of an exacerbation – to show that it’s more effective than steroid tablets, which is the only treatment currently available.”
The researchers are now hoping to launch a two-year phase 3 trial of the drug in 2025.