One of my articles last month was a discussion about the significant impact that the use of biologic therapies has made on the treatment of asthma patients. If you recall, a biologic is a treatment the patient administers to themselves by injection like insulin, usually once a month.
One thing that has been recognized about COPD patients is that some of them appear to have the same type of inflammation pattern as patients with asthma. These patients we have been saying have the “overlap syndrome” meaning they span a disease process that is partly COPD and partly asthma. Given this close relationship between the two diseases, pulmonary physicians began checking the biomarkers (eosinophil counts and IgE levels) in the blood of overlap patients. What was found was that a significant number of overlap patients had biomarker elevations like asthma patients even though they had no history of asthma (some actually did have an asthma history). This led to a consideration of using biologics as part of the COPD treatment. The results are now in at least for one biologic on the market.
Studies of one biologic has now resulted in the approval of its use in COPD patients with the overlap syndrome. All patients with COPD should be screened with biomarkers to determine if they would be a candidate for biologic therapy. The current biologic has shown a 30-34% reduction in moderate or severe COPD exacerbations and rapid and significant improvement in lung function sustained over 52 weeks.
