Two new studies of patients with difficult-to-control asthma show that the eczema drug Dupilumab alleviates asthma symptoms and improves patients' ability to breathe better than standard therapies. Dupilumab, an injectable anti-inflammatory drug, was approved in 2017 by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for eczema, a chronic skin disease. The studies were published online May 21 in The New England Journal of Medicine. The more than 2,000 patients enrolled in the studies suffered from moderate to severe asthma.
All used standard asthma inhalers and some also took oral steroids to control their severe asthma symptoms. In one study, the rate of asthma exacerbations was almost cut in half for those taking Dupilumab compared with those taking a placebo. On average, patients taking a placebo had close to one exacerbation per day during the year of the study. Exacerbations are…
