Tezepelumab led to significant reductions in asthma exacerbation rates over placebo in patients with severe uncontrolled asthma, according to a recent pooled analysis of clinical trials.
Zaid Zoumot, MBBS, MSc, PhD, FRCP, of the Respiratory Institute at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, and colleagues conducted the systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to evaluate the safety and efficacy of tezepelumab.
The 6 randomized controlled trials included 2667 patients with severe uncontrolled asthma, 1610 of whom received tezepelumab and 1057 of whom received placebo. Dr. Zoumot and colleagues assessed the impact of the treatment on forced expiratory volume in 1 second, the rate of asthma exacerbations, health-related quality of life, fractional exhaled nitric oxide, and blood eosinophil count.
Tezepelumab improved forced expiratory volume in 1 second by 0.15 L and reduced the asthma exacerbation rate by 0.60 a year compared with placebo. It also led to a decrease of 12.41 parts per billion of fractional exhaled nitric oxide compared with placebo. The improvements in forced expiratory volume in 1 second and fractional exhaled nitric oxide were maintained at 24 weeks and 52 weeks.
The incidence of adverse drug reactions was similar between patients receiving tezepelumab and placebo.
“Our meta-analysis results demonstrated that tezepelumab showed significant reduction of the asthma exacerbation rates compared to the pooled placebo,” Dr. Zoumot and colleagues concluded. “This observation was in contrast to a previously published meta-analysis where tezepelumab did not show statistically significant improvement of the exacerbation rate compared to the pooled placebo, mainly due to the lower number of included trials (n = 1).”
Zoumot Z, Al Busaidi N, Tashkandi W, et al. Tezepelumab for patients with severe uncontrolled asthma: a systematic review and meta-analysis. J Asthma Allergy. 2022;15:1665-1679. doi:10.2147/JAA.S378062
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