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Older Patients With COPD at Increased Risk for PE-Associated Death
BOSTON — Patients with COPD are at an increased risk for fatal pulmonary embolism (PE) and may require personalized, targeted thromboprophylaxis.
The data suggest that “maybe we should start thinking about if we are admitting a patient with COPD in that specific age group, higher thromboprophylaxis for PE,” said Marwa Oudah, MD, a pulmonary hypertension fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She presented her group’s findings in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
Known Risk Factor
COPD is a known risk factor for PE. To estimate how the obstructive lung disease may contribute to PE-related deaths among patients of varying ages, Oudah and colleagues drew data on deaths due to an underlying cause of PE from 1999 to 2020 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database.
They stratified the patients into two groups — those with or without COPD — whose data were included in the Multiple Causes of Death dataset, according to age groups ranging from 35 years to over 100 years. The investigators calculated proportional mortality ratios in the non-COPD group and applied these to the COPD-positive group among different age ranges to estimate the observed vs expected number of deaths.
A total of 10,434 persons who died from PE and had COPD listed among causes of death were identified. The sample was evenly divided by sex. The peak range of deaths was among those aged 75-84 years.
The authors saw an increase in PE-related mortality among patients with COPD aged 65-85 years (P < .001).
The ratios of observed-to-expected deaths among patients in this age range were “substantially greater than 1” said Oudah, with patients aged 75-79 years at highest risk for PE-related death, with an observed-to-expected ratio of 1.443.
In contrast, the rate of observed deaths among patients aged 85-89 years was similar to the expected rate, suggesting that the COPD-PE interaction may wane among older patients, she said.
Among patients aged 35-64 years, the risk for death from PE was not significantly higher for any of the 5-year age categories.
The investigators emphasized that “given the observed trend, individualized patient assessments are imperative to optimize preventable measures against PE in the aging COPD population.”
Confounding Comorbidities
In an interview, a pulmonary specialist who was not involved in the study commented that older persons with COPD tend to have multiple comorbidities that may contribute to the risk for PE.
“Older patients have so many comorbidities, and their risk for pulmonary embolism and thromboembolic disease is pretty high, so I’m not surprised that 75 to 79 years olds are having a higher mortality from PE, but it’s a little difficult to say whether that’s due to COPD,” said Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, who moderated the session.
The authors did not report a study funding source. Oudah and Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — Patients with COPD are at an increased risk for fatal pulmonary embolism (PE) and may require personalized, targeted thromboprophylaxis.
The data suggest that “maybe we should start thinking about if we are admitting a patient with COPD in that specific age group, higher thromboprophylaxis for PE,” said Marwa Oudah, MD, a pulmonary hypertension fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She presented her group’s findings in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
Known Risk Factor
COPD is a known risk factor for PE. To estimate how the obstructive lung disease may contribute to PE-related deaths among patients of varying ages, Oudah and colleagues drew data on deaths due to an underlying cause of PE from 1999 to 2020 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database.
They stratified the patients into two groups — those with or without COPD — whose data were included in the Multiple Causes of Death dataset, according to age groups ranging from 35 years to over 100 years. The investigators calculated proportional mortality ratios in the non-COPD group and applied these to the COPD-positive group among different age ranges to estimate the observed vs expected number of deaths.
A total of 10,434 persons who died from PE and had COPD listed among causes of death were identified. The sample was evenly divided by sex. The peak range of deaths was among those aged 75-84 years.
The authors saw an increase in PE-related mortality among patients with COPD aged 65-85 years (P < .001).
The ratios of observed-to-expected deaths among patients in this age range were “substantially greater than 1” said Oudah, with patients aged 75-79 years at highest risk for PE-related death, with an observed-to-expected ratio of 1.443.
In contrast, the rate of observed deaths among patients aged 85-89 years was similar to the expected rate, suggesting that the COPD-PE interaction may wane among older patients, she said.
Among patients aged 35-64 years, the risk for death from PE was not significantly higher for any of the 5-year age categories.
The investigators emphasized that “given the observed trend, individualized patient assessments are imperative to optimize preventable measures against PE in the aging COPD population.”
Confounding Comorbidities
In an interview, a pulmonary specialist who was not involved in the study commented that older persons with COPD tend to have multiple comorbidities that may contribute to the risk for PE.
“Older patients have so many comorbidities, and their risk for pulmonary embolism and thromboembolic disease is pretty high, so I’m not surprised that 75 to 79 years olds are having a higher mortality from PE, but it’s a little difficult to say whether that’s due to COPD,” said Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, who moderated the session.
The authors did not report a study funding source. Oudah and Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — Patients with COPD are at an increased risk for fatal pulmonary embolism (PE) and may require personalized, targeted thromboprophylaxis.
The data suggest that “maybe we should start thinking about if we are admitting a patient with COPD in that specific age group, higher thromboprophylaxis for PE,” said Marwa Oudah, MD, a pulmonary hypertension fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She presented her group’s findings in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
Known Risk Factor
COPD is a known risk factor for PE. To estimate how the obstructive lung disease may contribute to PE-related deaths among patients of varying ages, Oudah and colleagues drew data on deaths due to an underlying cause of PE from 1999 to 2020 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s WONDER database.
They stratified the patients into two groups — those with or without COPD — whose data were included in the Multiple Causes of Death dataset, according to age groups ranging from 35 years to over 100 years. The investigators calculated proportional mortality ratios in the non-COPD group and applied these to the COPD-positive group among different age ranges to estimate the observed vs expected number of deaths.
A total of 10,434 persons who died from PE and had COPD listed among causes of death were identified. The sample was evenly divided by sex. The peak range of deaths was among those aged 75-84 years.
The authors saw an increase in PE-related mortality among patients with COPD aged 65-85 years (P < .001).
The ratios of observed-to-expected deaths among patients in this age range were “substantially greater than 1” said Oudah, with patients aged 75-79 years at highest risk for PE-related death, with an observed-to-expected ratio of 1.443.
In contrast, the rate of observed deaths among patients aged 85-89 years was similar to the expected rate, suggesting that the COPD-PE interaction may wane among older patients, she said.
Among patients aged 35-64 years, the risk for death from PE was not significantly higher for any of the 5-year age categories.
The investigators emphasized that “given the observed trend, individualized patient assessments are imperative to optimize preventable measures against PE in the aging COPD population.”
Confounding Comorbidities
In an interview, a pulmonary specialist who was not involved in the study commented that older persons with COPD tend to have multiple comorbidities that may contribute to the risk for PE.
“Older patients have so many comorbidities, and their risk for pulmonary embolism and thromboembolic disease is pretty high, so I’m not surprised that 75 to 79 years olds are having a higher mortality from PE, but it’s a little difficult to say whether that’s due to COPD,” said Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, who moderated the session.
The authors did not report a study funding source. Oudah and Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM CHEST 2024
AF Burden Increases Around Time of COPD Hospitalizations
BOSTON — Patients with COPD who have exacerbations requiring hospitalization should be monitored for cardiac arrhythmias, investigators said.
This recommendation is based on results of a study of medical records showing that among more than 20,000 hospitalizations for patients with COPD without concurrent heart failure (HF), 40% patients had at least 6 minutes of daily atrial fibrillation (AF) burden, and nearly half of these patients had at least an hour of daily AF burden; patients with COPD and concurrent HF had similar daily AF burdens, reported Trent Fischer, MD, MS, senior principal scientist at Medtronic in Minneapolis.
“We can conclude that AF burden increases in the weeks after a hospitalization for COPD if they don’t have a concurrent diagnosis of heart failure. Also, having concurrent heart failure increases the risk of atrial fibrillation and increases the atrial fibrillation burden around the time of COPD hospitalization,” he said in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
The findings indicated a need for increased vigilance for AF around the time of a serious COPD exacerbation and may explain at least some of the increased risks for stroke observed in patients who are hospitalized for COPD exacerbations, he said.
Retrospective Study
They drew data from 2007 through 2021 on patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization therapy devices, pacemakers, and implantable cardiac monitors, using the Optum de-identified electronic health record dataset linked with Medtronic’s CareLink database to conduct a retrospective analysis.
They looked at admissions for COPD linked to available device diagnostic parameters between 30 days prior to and 60 days after admission for COPD.
They identified a total of 20,056 COPD hospitalizations for patients with concurrent HF and 3877 for those without HF.
Among patients with HF, 43% had a daily AF burden of at least 6 minutes, and 22% had at least 1 hour of irregular rhythms. Among patients without HF, 40% had at least 6 minutes of irregular rhythms daily, and 18% had at least 1 hour.
Among patients with HF, the daily average AF burden increased from a baseline of 158 min/d 30 days before an admission to 170 min/d at admission, returning to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
For patients without HF, the AF burden increased from 107 min/d at baseline to 113 min/d during hospitalization and returned to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
Confounding Factor?
In the Q&A, session moderator Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, said that when patients with HF get admitted for COPD exacerbations, their HF typically worsens and asked Dr. Fischer how he could tell the difference.
“I know there’s a lot of interaction between heart failure and COPD. They’re well-know comorbidities, and the exacerbation of one can bring on worsening of the other. At least with this database, we can’t really tease out any sort of differences,” Dr. Fischer replied.
“I think that a diagnosis of COPD exacerbation is pretty well laid out, but it’s sometimes difficult to separate worsening of heart failure in these patients, and often these patients get treated for both problems. It’s clear that it’s the heart failure patients who are having more atrial fibrillation episodes, which is not surprising, but the question is how much is the COPD exacerbation contributing to the atrial fibrillation?” said Dr. Sundar.
The study was supported by Medtronic. Dr. Fischer is employed by the company. Dr. Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — Patients with COPD who have exacerbations requiring hospitalization should be monitored for cardiac arrhythmias, investigators said.
This recommendation is based on results of a study of medical records showing that among more than 20,000 hospitalizations for patients with COPD without concurrent heart failure (HF), 40% patients had at least 6 minutes of daily atrial fibrillation (AF) burden, and nearly half of these patients had at least an hour of daily AF burden; patients with COPD and concurrent HF had similar daily AF burdens, reported Trent Fischer, MD, MS, senior principal scientist at Medtronic in Minneapolis.
“We can conclude that AF burden increases in the weeks after a hospitalization for COPD if they don’t have a concurrent diagnosis of heart failure. Also, having concurrent heart failure increases the risk of atrial fibrillation and increases the atrial fibrillation burden around the time of COPD hospitalization,” he said in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
The findings indicated a need for increased vigilance for AF around the time of a serious COPD exacerbation and may explain at least some of the increased risks for stroke observed in patients who are hospitalized for COPD exacerbations, he said.
Retrospective Study
They drew data from 2007 through 2021 on patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization therapy devices, pacemakers, and implantable cardiac monitors, using the Optum de-identified electronic health record dataset linked with Medtronic’s CareLink database to conduct a retrospective analysis.
They looked at admissions for COPD linked to available device diagnostic parameters between 30 days prior to and 60 days after admission for COPD.
They identified a total of 20,056 COPD hospitalizations for patients with concurrent HF and 3877 for those without HF.
Among patients with HF, 43% had a daily AF burden of at least 6 minutes, and 22% had at least 1 hour of irregular rhythms. Among patients without HF, 40% had at least 6 minutes of irregular rhythms daily, and 18% had at least 1 hour.
Among patients with HF, the daily average AF burden increased from a baseline of 158 min/d 30 days before an admission to 170 min/d at admission, returning to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
For patients without HF, the AF burden increased from 107 min/d at baseline to 113 min/d during hospitalization and returned to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
Confounding Factor?
In the Q&A, session moderator Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, said that when patients with HF get admitted for COPD exacerbations, their HF typically worsens and asked Dr. Fischer how he could tell the difference.
“I know there’s a lot of interaction between heart failure and COPD. They’re well-know comorbidities, and the exacerbation of one can bring on worsening of the other. At least with this database, we can’t really tease out any sort of differences,” Dr. Fischer replied.
“I think that a diagnosis of COPD exacerbation is pretty well laid out, but it’s sometimes difficult to separate worsening of heart failure in these patients, and often these patients get treated for both problems. It’s clear that it’s the heart failure patients who are having more atrial fibrillation episodes, which is not surprising, but the question is how much is the COPD exacerbation contributing to the atrial fibrillation?” said Dr. Sundar.
The study was supported by Medtronic. Dr. Fischer is employed by the company. Dr. Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — Patients with COPD who have exacerbations requiring hospitalization should be monitored for cardiac arrhythmias, investigators said.
This recommendation is based on results of a study of medical records showing that among more than 20,000 hospitalizations for patients with COPD without concurrent heart failure (HF), 40% patients had at least 6 minutes of daily atrial fibrillation (AF) burden, and nearly half of these patients had at least an hour of daily AF burden; patients with COPD and concurrent HF had similar daily AF burdens, reported Trent Fischer, MD, MS, senior principal scientist at Medtronic in Minneapolis.
“We can conclude that AF burden increases in the weeks after a hospitalization for COPD if they don’t have a concurrent diagnosis of heart failure. Also, having concurrent heart failure increases the risk of atrial fibrillation and increases the atrial fibrillation burden around the time of COPD hospitalization,” he said in a rapid-fire oral abstract session at the CHEST Annual Meeting.
The findings indicated a need for increased vigilance for AF around the time of a serious COPD exacerbation and may explain at least some of the increased risks for stroke observed in patients who are hospitalized for COPD exacerbations, he said.
Retrospective Study
They drew data from 2007 through 2021 on patients with implantable cardioverter defibrillators, cardiac resynchronization therapy devices, pacemakers, and implantable cardiac monitors, using the Optum de-identified electronic health record dataset linked with Medtronic’s CareLink database to conduct a retrospective analysis.
They looked at admissions for COPD linked to available device diagnostic parameters between 30 days prior to and 60 days after admission for COPD.
They identified a total of 20,056 COPD hospitalizations for patients with concurrent HF and 3877 for those without HF.
Among patients with HF, 43% had a daily AF burden of at least 6 minutes, and 22% had at least 1 hour of irregular rhythms. Among patients without HF, 40% had at least 6 minutes of irregular rhythms daily, and 18% had at least 1 hour.
Among patients with HF, the daily average AF burden increased from a baseline of 158 min/d 30 days before an admission to 170 min/d at admission, returning to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
For patients without HF, the AF burden increased from 107 min/d at baseline to 113 min/d during hospitalization and returned to baseline by 20 days after hospitalization.
Confounding Factor?
In the Q&A, session moderator Krishna Sundar, MBBS, MD, FCCP, a pulmonary, sleep medicine, and critical care medicine specialist at St. John’s Medical Center in Jackson, Wyoming, said that when patients with HF get admitted for COPD exacerbations, their HF typically worsens and asked Dr. Fischer how he could tell the difference.
“I know there’s a lot of interaction between heart failure and COPD. They’re well-know comorbidities, and the exacerbation of one can bring on worsening of the other. At least with this database, we can’t really tease out any sort of differences,” Dr. Fischer replied.
“I think that a diagnosis of COPD exacerbation is pretty well laid out, but it’s sometimes difficult to separate worsening of heart failure in these patients, and often these patients get treated for both problems. It’s clear that it’s the heart failure patients who are having more atrial fibrillation episodes, which is not surprising, but the question is how much is the COPD exacerbation contributing to the atrial fibrillation?” said Dr. Sundar.
The study was supported by Medtronic. Dr. Fischer is employed by the company. Dr. Sundar reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM CHEST 2024
Patients With Chronic Cough Report Relief With Semen Strychni
If standard therapies don’t give relief to patients with refractory cough associated with interstitial lung disease, maybe a little poison could do the trick.
Among 41 patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAFs) who had intractable cough, treatment with the traditional Chinese medicine semen strychni was associated with a significant improvement in patient-reported outcomes, reported Mingwan Su, MD, from Guang’anmen Hospital and the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, China.
“Semen strychni is associated with reduction in cough and can be an effective drug therapy for refractory cough in association with IPAFs,” she said in an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
Semen strychni is derived from the dried seeds of the plant Strychnos nux-vomica L. Its main toxic component is strychnine, the poison said to be favored by legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie.
Semen strychni is a central nervous system agonist that has reported efficacy in the treatment of musculoskeletal and autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, myasthenia gravis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The medication also has immunomodulatory properties, Su said, and is thought to have beneficial effects against cough associated with IPAFs by reducing hypersensitivity.
Case-Control Study
To test this, Su and colleagues conducted a single-center retrospective study of the effects of semen strychni on 41 patients with IPAF-associated cough who were treated with low-dose oral semen strychni 300 mg/d for 2 weeks. These patients were paired with 41 control individuals matched for age, sex, and disease course. Control individuals received standard of care therapies.
The investigators found that for the primary endpoint of a change in the visual analog scale (VAS) at 2 weeks, there was a significantly greater reduction from baseline among patients treated with semen strychni compared with control individuals, with a baseline mean VAS score of 4.9 reduced to 2.1 at the end of treatment, vs 4.6 pre- to 3.3 post-treatment for control individuals. This difference translated to an odds ratio (OR) favoring semen strychni of 0.75 (P < .001).
In addition, the toxic compound was also associated with greater patient-reported improvement in the quality of life, as measured using the Leicester Cough Questionnaire, a 19-item scale that measures quality of life for people with chronic cough. Patients in the experimental arm had mean scores of 11.9 before treatment and 19 at the end of therapy compared with 12 and 15.1 points, respectively, among individuals in the control arm. This translated to an OR of 3.8 (P < .001) for patients on semen strychni.
The toxin appeared to be generally safe. There were no reported cases of pain, fainting, or bleeding in either study group, although there was one case of muscle twitching in the semen strychni group, Su reported.
There is evidence to suggest that semen strychni may have a calming effect on cough through action in the STAT3 pathway, considered to be a promising therapeutic target for musculoskeletal conditions, Su noted.
Not Ready for Prime Time
“My feeling is that these kinds of abstracts are welcome, but this is far from reality at this point,” said Vijay Balasubramanian, MD, clinical professor of medicine and director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at the University of California San Francisco.
“We need some kind of a regulated way of understanding dose characteristics and pharmacokinetics, and so it should be followed by more systematic studies,” he said in an interview.
Both Balasubramanian and his co-moderator Andrew R. Berman, MD, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Allergy and Rheumatology at Rutgers Health New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey, said that they sympathize with clinicians and their patients who seek out unusual therapies such as semen strychni.
“It’s very frustrating to treat chronic cough, especially associated with fibrotic lung disease, and the extent to which researchers will go to find that one product that perhaps can make a difference is understandable,” Berman told this news organization.
Su did not report a study funding source. Su, Balasubramanian, and Berman reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
If standard therapies don’t give relief to patients with refractory cough associated with interstitial lung disease, maybe a little poison could do the trick.
Among 41 patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAFs) who had intractable cough, treatment with the traditional Chinese medicine semen strychni was associated with a significant improvement in patient-reported outcomes, reported Mingwan Su, MD, from Guang’anmen Hospital and the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, China.
“Semen strychni is associated with reduction in cough and can be an effective drug therapy for refractory cough in association with IPAFs,” she said in an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
Semen strychni is derived from the dried seeds of the plant Strychnos nux-vomica L. Its main toxic component is strychnine, the poison said to be favored by legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie.
Semen strychni is a central nervous system agonist that has reported efficacy in the treatment of musculoskeletal and autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, myasthenia gravis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The medication also has immunomodulatory properties, Su said, and is thought to have beneficial effects against cough associated with IPAFs by reducing hypersensitivity.
Case-Control Study
To test this, Su and colleagues conducted a single-center retrospective study of the effects of semen strychni on 41 patients with IPAF-associated cough who were treated with low-dose oral semen strychni 300 mg/d for 2 weeks. These patients were paired with 41 control individuals matched for age, sex, and disease course. Control individuals received standard of care therapies.
The investigators found that for the primary endpoint of a change in the visual analog scale (VAS) at 2 weeks, there was a significantly greater reduction from baseline among patients treated with semen strychni compared with control individuals, with a baseline mean VAS score of 4.9 reduced to 2.1 at the end of treatment, vs 4.6 pre- to 3.3 post-treatment for control individuals. This difference translated to an odds ratio (OR) favoring semen strychni of 0.75 (P < .001).
In addition, the toxic compound was also associated with greater patient-reported improvement in the quality of life, as measured using the Leicester Cough Questionnaire, a 19-item scale that measures quality of life for people with chronic cough. Patients in the experimental arm had mean scores of 11.9 before treatment and 19 at the end of therapy compared with 12 and 15.1 points, respectively, among individuals in the control arm. This translated to an OR of 3.8 (P < .001) for patients on semen strychni.
The toxin appeared to be generally safe. There were no reported cases of pain, fainting, or bleeding in either study group, although there was one case of muscle twitching in the semen strychni group, Su reported.
There is evidence to suggest that semen strychni may have a calming effect on cough through action in the STAT3 pathway, considered to be a promising therapeutic target for musculoskeletal conditions, Su noted.
Not Ready for Prime Time
“My feeling is that these kinds of abstracts are welcome, but this is far from reality at this point,” said Vijay Balasubramanian, MD, clinical professor of medicine and director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at the University of California San Francisco.
“We need some kind of a regulated way of understanding dose characteristics and pharmacokinetics, and so it should be followed by more systematic studies,” he said in an interview.
Both Balasubramanian and his co-moderator Andrew R. Berman, MD, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Allergy and Rheumatology at Rutgers Health New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey, said that they sympathize with clinicians and their patients who seek out unusual therapies such as semen strychni.
“It’s very frustrating to treat chronic cough, especially associated with fibrotic lung disease, and the extent to which researchers will go to find that one product that perhaps can make a difference is understandable,” Berman told this news organization.
Su did not report a study funding source. Su, Balasubramanian, and Berman reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
If standard therapies don’t give relief to patients with refractory cough associated with interstitial lung disease, maybe a little poison could do the trick.
Among 41 patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAFs) who had intractable cough, treatment with the traditional Chinese medicine semen strychni was associated with a significant improvement in patient-reported outcomes, reported Mingwan Su, MD, from Guang’anmen Hospital and the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences in Beijing, China.
“Semen strychni is associated with reduction in cough and can be an effective drug therapy for refractory cough in association with IPAFs,” she said in an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
Semen strychni is derived from the dried seeds of the plant Strychnos nux-vomica L. Its main toxic component is strychnine, the poison said to be favored by legendary mystery writer Agatha Christie.
Semen strychni is a central nervous system agonist that has reported efficacy in the treatment of musculoskeletal and autoimmune conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis, myasthenia gravis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
The medication also has immunomodulatory properties, Su said, and is thought to have beneficial effects against cough associated with IPAFs by reducing hypersensitivity.
Case-Control Study
To test this, Su and colleagues conducted a single-center retrospective study of the effects of semen strychni on 41 patients with IPAF-associated cough who were treated with low-dose oral semen strychni 300 mg/d for 2 weeks. These patients were paired with 41 control individuals matched for age, sex, and disease course. Control individuals received standard of care therapies.
The investigators found that for the primary endpoint of a change in the visual analog scale (VAS) at 2 weeks, there was a significantly greater reduction from baseline among patients treated with semen strychni compared with control individuals, with a baseline mean VAS score of 4.9 reduced to 2.1 at the end of treatment, vs 4.6 pre- to 3.3 post-treatment for control individuals. This difference translated to an odds ratio (OR) favoring semen strychni of 0.75 (P < .001).
In addition, the toxic compound was also associated with greater patient-reported improvement in the quality of life, as measured using the Leicester Cough Questionnaire, a 19-item scale that measures quality of life for people with chronic cough. Patients in the experimental arm had mean scores of 11.9 before treatment and 19 at the end of therapy compared with 12 and 15.1 points, respectively, among individuals in the control arm. This translated to an OR of 3.8 (P < .001) for patients on semen strychni.
The toxin appeared to be generally safe. There were no reported cases of pain, fainting, or bleeding in either study group, although there was one case of muscle twitching in the semen strychni group, Su reported.
There is evidence to suggest that semen strychni may have a calming effect on cough through action in the STAT3 pathway, considered to be a promising therapeutic target for musculoskeletal conditions, Su noted.
Not Ready for Prime Time
“My feeling is that these kinds of abstracts are welcome, but this is far from reality at this point,” said Vijay Balasubramanian, MD, clinical professor of medicine and director of the Pulmonary Hypertension Program at the University of California San Francisco.
“We need some kind of a regulated way of understanding dose characteristics and pharmacokinetics, and so it should be followed by more systematic studies,” he said in an interview.
Both Balasubramanian and his co-moderator Andrew R. Berman, MD, director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine and Allergy and Rheumatology at Rutgers Health New Jersey Medical School in Newark, New Jersey, said that they sympathize with clinicians and their patients who seek out unusual therapies such as semen strychni.
“It’s very frustrating to treat chronic cough, especially associated with fibrotic lung disease, and the extent to which researchers will go to find that one product that perhaps can make a difference is understandable,” Berman told this news organization.
Su did not report a study funding source. Su, Balasubramanian, and Berman reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM CHEST 2024
Trend Toward Higher Mortality in Patients With CF and CVD
BOSTON — With the remarkable advances made in therapy over the past decade, many patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) can expect to survive into their 50s and even well beyond. And as evidence from a new study suggests, there is an increasing need for cardiovascular screening and specialized cardiac care for these patients.
Among more than 83,000 patients with CF hospitalized for any reason from 2016 through 2021, less than 1% of patients had a cardiac cause listed, but in unadjusted analyses, these patients had a more than twofold risk for in-hospital death than those with CF hospitalized for other causes, reported Adnan Bhat, MD, assistant professor of hospital medicine at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Although the excess mortality was no longer statistically significant in analyses adjusted for potential confounding factors, the data highlight a trend that requires further exploration, he said during an oral abstract session at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).
“There’s a trend for people with cystic fibrosis admitted for cardiac causes to have a higher in-hospital mortality and increased rate of discharge to nursing facilities, especially for patients admitted for heart failure. The clinical implication is that there is an increased need to start screening for cardiovascular risk factors,” he said.
National Database Sample
Bhat and colleagues conducted a retrospective study using the National Inpatient Sample database to identify all hospitalizations among patients with CF in the United States from 2016 through 2021.
They included all hospitalizations with a principal diagnosis code for atrial fibrillation, heart failure, or myocardial infarction.
Of 83,250 total hospitalizations during the study period, 415 (0.5%) were for primary cardiac causes. These included 170 hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation, 95 for heart failure, and 150 for myocardial infarction.
Patients hospitalized for cardiac causes had a higher mean age (59.5 vs 34.5 years) and more comorbidities than patients hospitalized for other causes. These comorbidities included hyperlipidemia, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and a family history of coronary artery disease.
In all, 5% of patients hospitalized for cardiac cause died in hospital, compared with 2% of patients hospitalized for other reasons (P = .044).
However, in logistic regression analyses adjusting for age, sex, and race, this difference was no longer significant.
Similarly, an unadjusted analysis showed that patients with cardiac disease were twice as likely to be discharged to a nursing facility (8% vs 4%, respectively), but this difference too disappeared in adjusted analyses.
The risk for in-hospital mortality appeared to be highest among those patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure, who had an 11% rate of in-hospital death, compared with 2% among patients with CF hospitalized for other causes.
The total number of deaths was too small, however, to allow for regression analysis, Bhat said.
Nonetheless, taken together, the data indicate a trend toward increased mortality from cardiovascular causes among older patients with CF, as well as the need for further research into the cardiovascular health of these patients, Bhat concluded.
Better Nutrition, Higher Risk
In an interview, Yuqing A. Gao, MD, from the Santa Monica Pulmonary Sleep Clinic in California, who was not involved in the study, commented that with the advent of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor modulator therapy, patients with CF tend to have increases in body mass index and improved nutritional intake and absorption, which in turn could increase hyperlipidemia and other factors that might in turn contribute to increased CVD risk.
“It’s really an interesting area of research, and there’s hope that this will bring more focus on how to better screen [for CVD risk] because that’s something that’s very much not known at this time,” she said.
Gao was co-moderator for the session where Bhat presented the data. Bhat did not report a study funding source. Bhat and Gao reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — With the remarkable advances made in therapy over the past decade, many patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) can expect to survive into their 50s and even well beyond. And as evidence from a new study suggests, there is an increasing need for cardiovascular screening and specialized cardiac care for these patients.
Among more than 83,000 patients with CF hospitalized for any reason from 2016 through 2021, less than 1% of patients had a cardiac cause listed, but in unadjusted analyses, these patients had a more than twofold risk for in-hospital death than those with CF hospitalized for other causes, reported Adnan Bhat, MD, assistant professor of hospital medicine at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Although the excess mortality was no longer statistically significant in analyses adjusted for potential confounding factors, the data highlight a trend that requires further exploration, he said during an oral abstract session at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).
“There’s a trend for people with cystic fibrosis admitted for cardiac causes to have a higher in-hospital mortality and increased rate of discharge to nursing facilities, especially for patients admitted for heart failure. The clinical implication is that there is an increased need to start screening for cardiovascular risk factors,” he said.
National Database Sample
Bhat and colleagues conducted a retrospective study using the National Inpatient Sample database to identify all hospitalizations among patients with CF in the United States from 2016 through 2021.
They included all hospitalizations with a principal diagnosis code for atrial fibrillation, heart failure, or myocardial infarction.
Of 83,250 total hospitalizations during the study period, 415 (0.5%) were for primary cardiac causes. These included 170 hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation, 95 for heart failure, and 150 for myocardial infarction.
Patients hospitalized for cardiac causes had a higher mean age (59.5 vs 34.5 years) and more comorbidities than patients hospitalized for other causes. These comorbidities included hyperlipidemia, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and a family history of coronary artery disease.
In all, 5% of patients hospitalized for cardiac cause died in hospital, compared with 2% of patients hospitalized for other reasons (P = .044).
However, in logistic regression analyses adjusting for age, sex, and race, this difference was no longer significant.
Similarly, an unadjusted analysis showed that patients with cardiac disease were twice as likely to be discharged to a nursing facility (8% vs 4%, respectively), but this difference too disappeared in adjusted analyses.
The risk for in-hospital mortality appeared to be highest among those patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure, who had an 11% rate of in-hospital death, compared with 2% among patients with CF hospitalized for other causes.
The total number of deaths was too small, however, to allow for regression analysis, Bhat said.
Nonetheless, taken together, the data indicate a trend toward increased mortality from cardiovascular causes among older patients with CF, as well as the need for further research into the cardiovascular health of these patients, Bhat concluded.
Better Nutrition, Higher Risk
In an interview, Yuqing A. Gao, MD, from the Santa Monica Pulmonary Sleep Clinic in California, who was not involved in the study, commented that with the advent of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor modulator therapy, patients with CF tend to have increases in body mass index and improved nutritional intake and absorption, which in turn could increase hyperlipidemia and other factors that might in turn contribute to increased CVD risk.
“It’s really an interesting area of research, and there’s hope that this will bring more focus on how to better screen [for CVD risk] because that’s something that’s very much not known at this time,” she said.
Gao was co-moderator for the session where Bhat presented the data. Bhat did not report a study funding source. Bhat and Gao reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON — With the remarkable advances made in therapy over the past decade, many patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) can expect to survive into their 50s and even well beyond. And as evidence from a new study suggests, there is an increasing need for cardiovascular screening and specialized cardiac care for these patients.
Among more than 83,000 patients with CF hospitalized for any reason from 2016 through 2021, less than 1% of patients had a cardiac cause listed, but in unadjusted analyses, these patients had a more than twofold risk for in-hospital death than those with CF hospitalized for other causes, reported Adnan Bhat, MD, assistant professor of hospital medicine at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Although the excess mortality was no longer statistically significant in analyses adjusted for potential confounding factors, the data highlight a trend that requires further exploration, he said during an oral abstract session at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).
“There’s a trend for people with cystic fibrosis admitted for cardiac causes to have a higher in-hospital mortality and increased rate of discharge to nursing facilities, especially for patients admitted for heart failure. The clinical implication is that there is an increased need to start screening for cardiovascular risk factors,” he said.
National Database Sample
Bhat and colleagues conducted a retrospective study using the National Inpatient Sample database to identify all hospitalizations among patients with CF in the United States from 2016 through 2021.
They included all hospitalizations with a principal diagnosis code for atrial fibrillation, heart failure, or myocardial infarction.
Of 83,250 total hospitalizations during the study period, 415 (0.5%) were for primary cardiac causes. These included 170 hospitalizations for atrial fibrillation, 95 for heart failure, and 150 for myocardial infarction.
Patients hospitalized for cardiac causes had a higher mean age (59.5 vs 34.5 years) and more comorbidities than patients hospitalized for other causes. These comorbidities included hyperlipidemia, chronic kidney disease, obesity, and a family history of coronary artery disease.
In all, 5% of patients hospitalized for cardiac cause died in hospital, compared with 2% of patients hospitalized for other reasons (P = .044).
However, in logistic regression analyses adjusting for age, sex, and race, this difference was no longer significant.
Similarly, an unadjusted analysis showed that patients with cardiac disease were twice as likely to be discharged to a nursing facility (8% vs 4%, respectively), but this difference too disappeared in adjusted analyses.
The risk for in-hospital mortality appeared to be highest among those patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure, who had an 11% rate of in-hospital death, compared with 2% among patients with CF hospitalized for other causes.
The total number of deaths was too small, however, to allow for regression analysis, Bhat said.
Nonetheless, taken together, the data indicate a trend toward increased mortality from cardiovascular causes among older patients with CF, as well as the need for further research into the cardiovascular health of these patients, Bhat concluded.
Better Nutrition, Higher Risk
In an interview, Yuqing A. Gao, MD, from the Santa Monica Pulmonary Sleep Clinic in California, who was not involved in the study, commented that with the advent of elexacaftor/tezacaftor/ivacaftor modulator therapy, patients with CF tend to have increases in body mass index and improved nutritional intake and absorption, which in turn could increase hyperlipidemia and other factors that might in turn contribute to increased CVD risk.
“It’s really an interesting area of research, and there’s hope that this will bring more focus on how to better screen [for CVD risk] because that’s something that’s very much not known at this time,” she said.
Gao was co-moderator for the session where Bhat presented the data. Bhat did not report a study funding source. Bhat and Gao reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM CHEST 2024
‘Door-to-Thrombectomy’ Time for Acute PE Linked to Better Outcomes
BOSTON —
Among nearly 800 patients with acute PE whose data are recorded in the FlowTriever All-Comer Registry for Patient Safety and Hemodynamics (FLASH), a prospective multicenter registry of individuals treated with mechanical thrombectomy using the FlowTriever system (Inari Medical), shorter time from admission to mechanical thrombectomy was associated with significantly greater reductions in intraprocedural mean and systolic pulmonary artery pressures (PAP), greater reductions in the right ventricular/left ventricular (RV/LV) ratio, and longer 6-minute walk times at 6 months, reported Krunal H. Patel, MD, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.
“Mechanical thrombectomy in the FLASH registry showed a mortality benefit. I think as time progresses and mechanical thrombectomy becomes more popular, we’re just going to need to figure out what is the ideal time for intervention,” he said during an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
“There’s mortality benefit in any case whether the patient is high-risk or intermediate-high. This is a thought-provoking retrospective analysis that says that early intervention is probably better than doing it late, but regardless, the FLASH registry trial showed that early thrombectomy or thrombectomy in general shows positive mortality benefit,” Patel said in an interview.
He likened the challenge for pulmonary and critical care specialists to that of interventional cardiologists, who have determined that the ideal window for starting percutaneous coronary interventions is within 90 minutes of the patient’s arrival at the facility.
“I think we have to get our ‘door-to-balloon’ time for PE care,” he said.
Study Details
Patel and colleague Parth M. Rali, MD, FCCP, associate professor of thoracic medicine at Temple, conducted a retrospective review of data on 787 US patients in the FLASH registry for whom time to mechanical thrombectomy data were available. They stratified the patients into short and long time to mechanical thrombectomy groups, with “short” defined as ≤ 12 hours of presentation and “long” as > 12 hours.
They found that the median time to thrombectomy was 19.68 hours. In all, 242 patients (31%) were treated within the short window, and the remaining 545 patients (69%) were treated after at least 12 hours had passed.
Comparing clinical characteristics between the groups, the investigators noted that significantly more patients in the short time group vs long time group were categorized as high-risk (11.2% vs 6.2%; P = .0026). This difference is likely due to the need for greater urgency among high-risk patients, Patel said.
Patients in the short time group also had significantly higher baseline RV/LV ratios and lactate levels, but baseline dyspnea scores and pre-procedure median and systolic PAP were similar between the groups.
The mean time to thrombectomy was 6.08 hours in the short time group vs 34.04 hours in the long time group. Their respective median times were 6.01 and 24.73 hours.
The procedural time was similar between the groups, at 45 and 42 minutes, respectively.
The location of the treated thrombus was central only in 35.1% and 26.5% patients in the short and long time groups, respectively. Lobar-only thrombi were treated in 7.9% and 14.3%, respectively, and both central and lobar thrombi were treated in 57.0% and 59.2%, respectively.
Both 48-hour and 30-day all-cause mortality rates were similar between the groups (0.4%/0.2% and 0.5%/1.0%).
Patients in the short time group had slightly but significantly longer post-procedure hospital and intensive care unit stays, but 30-day readmission rates — whether for PE- or non-PE–related causes — were similar.
Where the differences between the groups really showed, however, were PAP reductions over baseline, with decline in median pressures of −8.7 mm Hg in the short group vs −7.2 mm Hg in the long group (P = .0008), and drops in systolic PAP of −14.4 vs −12.1 mm Hg, respectively (P = .0011).
In addition, reductions in RV/LV ratios from baseline were also significantly greater among patients whose thrombectomies had been expedited at the 48-hour, 30-day, and 6-month follow-up periods.
At 6 months, patients who had received mechanical thrombectomy within 12 hours also had significantly longer 6-minute walk distances (442.2 vs 390.5 m; P = .0032).
Low Thrombolysis Rate
Following his presentation, session co-moderator Galina Glazman-Kuczaj, MD, from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Albany Med Health System, Albany, New York, asked Patel what percentage of patients, if any, had received thrombolytic therapy before the thrombectomy procedure.
He noted that only 1% or 2% patients in the FLASH registry received thrombolysis.
In an interview, Glazman-Kuczaj said that “it was reassuring for [Patel] to report that it was only a small population of patients who got thrombolysis beforehand in either group because you would expect that maybe people in the group that took longer to have a thrombectomy got some thrombolysis beforehand and that perhaps they were more stable, but it seems like thrombectomy was the first-line treatment in both groups.”
The FLASH Registry is funded by Inari Medical. Patel and Glazman-Kuczaj reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON —
Among nearly 800 patients with acute PE whose data are recorded in the FlowTriever All-Comer Registry for Patient Safety and Hemodynamics (FLASH), a prospective multicenter registry of individuals treated with mechanical thrombectomy using the FlowTriever system (Inari Medical), shorter time from admission to mechanical thrombectomy was associated with significantly greater reductions in intraprocedural mean and systolic pulmonary artery pressures (PAP), greater reductions in the right ventricular/left ventricular (RV/LV) ratio, and longer 6-minute walk times at 6 months, reported Krunal H. Patel, MD, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.
“Mechanical thrombectomy in the FLASH registry showed a mortality benefit. I think as time progresses and mechanical thrombectomy becomes more popular, we’re just going to need to figure out what is the ideal time for intervention,” he said during an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
“There’s mortality benefit in any case whether the patient is high-risk or intermediate-high. This is a thought-provoking retrospective analysis that says that early intervention is probably better than doing it late, but regardless, the FLASH registry trial showed that early thrombectomy or thrombectomy in general shows positive mortality benefit,” Patel said in an interview.
He likened the challenge for pulmonary and critical care specialists to that of interventional cardiologists, who have determined that the ideal window for starting percutaneous coronary interventions is within 90 minutes of the patient’s arrival at the facility.
“I think we have to get our ‘door-to-balloon’ time for PE care,” he said.
Study Details
Patel and colleague Parth M. Rali, MD, FCCP, associate professor of thoracic medicine at Temple, conducted a retrospective review of data on 787 US patients in the FLASH registry for whom time to mechanical thrombectomy data were available. They stratified the patients into short and long time to mechanical thrombectomy groups, with “short” defined as ≤ 12 hours of presentation and “long” as > 12 hours.
They found that the median time to thrombectomy was 19.68 hours. In all, 242 patients (31%) were treated within the short window, and the remaining 545 patients (69%) were treated after at least 12 hours had passed.
Comparing clinical characteristics between the groups, the investigators noted that significantly more patients in the short time group vs long time group were categorized as high-risk (11.2% vs 6.2%; P = .0026). This difference is likely due to the need for greater urgency among high-risk patients, Patel said.
Patients in the short time group also had significantly higher baseline RV/LV ratios and lactate levels, but baseline dyspnea scores and pre-procedure median and systolic PAP were similar between the groups.
The mean time to thrombectomy was 6.08 hours in the short time group vs 34.04 hours in the long time group. Their respective median times were 6.01 and 24.73 hours.
The procedural time was similar between the groups, at 45 and 42 minutes, respectively.
The location of the treated thrombus was central only in 35.1% and 26.5% patients in the short and long time groups, respectively. Lobar-only thrombi were treated in 7.9% and 14.3%, respectively, and both central and lobar thrombi were treated in 57.0% and 59.2%, respectively.
Both 48-hour and 30-day all-cause mortality rates were similar between the groups (0.4%/0.2% and 0.5%/1.0%).
Patients in the short time group had slightly but significantly longer post-procedure hospital and intensive care unit stays, but 30-day readmission rates — whether for PE- or non-PE–related causes — were similar.
Where the differences between the groups really showed, however, were PAP reductions over baseline, with decline in median pressures of −8.7 mm Hg in the short group vs −7.2 mm Hg in the long group (P = .0008), and drops in systolic PAP of −14.4 vs −12.1 mm Hg, respectively (P = .0011).
In addition, reductions in RV/LV ratios from baseline were also significantly greater among patients whose thrombectomies had been expedited at the 48-hour, 30-day, and 6-month follow-up periods.
At 6 months, patients who had received mechanical thrombectomy within 12 hours also had significantly longer 6-minute walk distances (442.2 vs 390.5 m; P = .0032).
Low Thrombolysis Rate
Following his presentation, session co-moderator Galina Glazman-Kuczaj, MD, from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Albany Med Health System, Albany, New York, asked Patel what percentage of patients, if any, had received thrombolytic therapy before the thrombectomy procedure.
He noted that only 1% or 2% patients in the FLASH registry received thrombolysis.
In an interview, Glazman-Kuczaj said that “it was reassuring for [Patel] to report that it was only a small population of patients who got thrombolysis beforehand in either group because you would expect that maybe people in the group that took longer to have a thrombectomy got some thrombolysis beforehand and that perhaps they were more stable, but it seems like thrombectomy was the first-line treatment in both groups.”
The FLASH Registry is funded by Inari Medical. Patel and Glazman-Kuczaj reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
BOSTON —
Among nearly 800 patients with acute PE whose data are recorded in the FlowTriever All-Comer Registry for Patient Safety and Hemodynamics (FLASH), a prospective multicenter registry of individuals treated with mechanical thrombectomy using the FlowTriever system (Inari Medical), shorter time from admission to mechanical thrombectomy was associated with significantly greater reductions in intraprocedural mean and systolic pulmonary artery pressures (PAP), greater reductions in the right ventricular/left ventricular (RV/LV) ratio, and longer 6-minute walk times at 6 months, reported Krunal H. Patel, MD, a pulmonary and critical care fellow at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.
“Mechanical thrombectomy in the FLASH registry showed a mortality benefit. I think as time progresses and mechanical thrombectomy becomes more popular, we’re just going to need to figure out what is the ideal time for intervention,” he said during an oral abstract session at the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) 2024 Annual Meeting.
“There’s mortality benefit in any case whether the patient is high-risk or intermediate-high. This is a thought-provoking retrospective analysis that says that early intervention is probably better than doing it late, but regardless, the FLASH registry trial showed that early thrombectomy or thrombectomy in general shows positive mortality benefit,” Patel said in an interview.
He likened the challenge for pulmonary and critical care specialists to that of interventional cardiologists, who have determined that the ideal window for starting percutaneous coronary interventions is within 90 minutes of the patient’s arrival at the facility.
“I think we have to get our ‘door-to-balloon’ time for PE care,” he said.
Study Details
Patel and colleague Parth M. Rali, MD, FCCP, associate professor of thoracic medicine at Temple, conducted a retrospective review of data on 787 US patients in the FLASH registry for whom time to mechanical thrombectomy data were available. They stratified the patients into short and long time to mechanical thrombectomy groups, with “short” defined as ≤ 12 hours of presentation and “long” as > 12 hours.
They found that the median time to thrombectomy was 19.68 hours. In all, 242 patients (31%) were treated within the short window, and the remaining 545 patients (69%) were treated after at least 12 hours had passed.
Comparing clinical characteristics between the groups, the investigators noted that significantly more patients in the short time group vs long time group were categorized as high-risk (11.2% vs 6.2%; P = .0026). This difference is likely due to the need for greater urgency among high-risk patients, Patel said.
Patients in the short time group also had significantly higher baseline RV/LV ratios and lactate levels, but baseline dyspnea scores and pre-procedure median and systolic PAP were similar between the groups.
The mean time to thrombectomy was 6.08 hours in the short time group vs 34.04 hours in the long time group. Their respective median times were 6.01 and 24.73 hours.
The procedural time was similar between the groups, at 45 and 42 minutes, respectively.
The location of the treated thrombus was central only in 35.1% and 26.5% patients in the short and long time groups, respectively. Lobar-only thrombi were treated in 7.9% and 14.3%, respectively, and both central and lobar thrombi were treated in 57.0% and 59.2%, respectively.
Both 48-hour and 30-day all-cause mortality rates were similar between the groups (0.4%/0.2% and 0.5%/1.0%).
Patients in the short time group had slightly but significantly longer post-procedure hospital and intensive care unit stays, but 30-day readmission rates — whether for PE- or non-PE–related causes — were similar.
Where the differences between the groups really showed, however, were PAP reductions over baseline, with decline in median pressures of −8.7 mm Hg in the short group vs −7.2 mm Hg in the long group (P = .0008), and drops in systolic PAP of −14.4 vs −12.1 mm Hg, respectively (P = .0011).
In addition, reductions in RV/LV ratios from baseline were also significantly greater among patients whose thrombectomies had been expedited at the 48-hour, 30-day, and 6-month follow-up periods.
At 6 months, patients who had received mechanical thrombectomy within 12 hours also had significantly longer 6-minute walk distances (442.2 vs 390.5 m; P = .0032).
Low Thrombolysis Rate
Following his presentation, session co-moderator Galina Glazman-Kuczaj, MD, from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Albany Med Health System, Albany, New York, asked Patel what percentage of patients, if any, had received thrombolytic therapy before the thrombectomy procedure.
He noted that only 1% or 2% patients in the FLASH registry received thrombolysis.
In an interview, Glazman-Kuczaj said that “it was reassuring for [Patel] to report that it was only a small population of patients who got thrombolysis beforehand in either group because you would expect that maybe people in the group that took longer to have a thrombectomy got some thrombolysis beforehand and that perhaps they were more stable, but it seems like thrombectomy was the first-line treatment in both groups.”
The FLASH Registry is funded by Inari Medical. Patel and Glazman-Kuczaj reported no relevant financial relationships.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
FROM CHEST 2024
Promise for Disease-Modifying Therapies to Tame Huntington’s Disease
Much progress has been made in managing the symptoms of Huntington’s disease, but the real excitement lies in the development of disease-modifying drugs and genetic therapy.
In April 1872, The Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia published a roughly 3,000-word paper, titled “On Chorea,” by George Huntington, a 22-year-old family practice physician recently graduated from Columbia University, New York City.
“Chorea is essentially a disease of the nervous system. The name ‘chorea’ is given to the disease on account of the dancing propensities of those who are affected by it, and it is a very appropriate designation,” he wrote in the introduction.
Toward the end of the paper Dr. Huntington described a “hereditary chorea” that he had observed while on professional rounds with his father, also a physician, in towns on the eastern end of Long Island in New York.
“It is spoken of by those in whose veins the seeds of the disease are known to exist, with a kind of horror, and not at all alluded to except through dire necessity, when it is mentioned as ‘that disorder,’ ” he wrote, noting later that “I have never known a recovery or even an amelioration of symptoms in this form of chorea; when once it begins it clings to the bitter end.”1
It wasn’t until 1993 that a team of investigators identified the gene responsible for the neurodegenerative disorder we now know as Huntington’s disease.
That discovery sparked hope for better treatments and a cure, but progress over the last 31 years has been incremental. Nonetheless, recent intensive research into novel approaches for treating Huntington’s disease have considerably brightened prospects for patients and caregivers, experts say.
“This is a devastating neurodegenerative disease and in talking to families that I have had the privilege and honor of following, I hear from them that ‘in 1993 when the gene was identified and my family member — parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle — had Huntington’s, we thought that there would be a curative or disease-modifying therapy in no time,’ ” said Erin Furr Stimming, MD, FAAN, FANA professor of neurology and Memorial Hermann Endowed Chair at the McGovern Medical School at University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.
“Here we are in 2024. I think our families are still so incredibly resilient and courageous, and they are willing and able to participate in clinical trials. Families in the Huntington’s disease community at large are really ready to have trials that do, in fact, demonstrate some evidence of slowing of disease progression. It’s an exciting time,” she said in an interview.
Repeating Nucleotides
Huntington’s disease is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene (HTT), which encodes for the huntingtin protein (HTT). The multiple repeats result in expanded expression of mutant HTT. The mutated protein disrupts normal cellular processes, alters intracellular calcium homeostasis, and interferes with gene transcription, leading to progressive degeneration of neurons, and to a hallmark Huntington’s disease triad consisting of movement disorders, cognitive decline, and mood/behavioral issues.
The number of repeats determines the severity of disease and the age of onset. In nonaffected persons the gene contains about 20 CAG repeats, but as genetics research dating from the 1990s has shown, a single HTT allele containing more than 40 CAG repeats will inevitably result in disease, whereas carriers with fewer than 36 repeats on both alleles will remain unaffected.2
The prevalence of the mutation in Western populations is estimated to be from 4 to 10 per 100,000.3
The disease usually manifests first in adults aged 30-50 years but may also occur in children or adolescents and young adults. Early symptoms often include a decline in executive function that may be noticeable to the patient’s family and friends, mood changes, and chorea.
“Because of the uncontrolled movements (chorea), a person with Huntington’s disease may lose a lot of weight without intending to, and may have trouble walking, balancing, and moving around safely. They will eventually lose the ability to work, drive, and manage tasks at home, and may qualify for disability benefits. Over time, the individual will develop difficulty with speaking and swallowing, and their movements will become slow and stiff. People with advanced Huntington’s disease need full-time care to help with their day-to-day activities, and they ultimately succumb to pneumonia, heart failure, or other complications,” according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.4
Managing Symptoms
say neurologists.
There are currently three medications approved for the treatment of chorea, all in the class of agents known as vesicular monoamine transporter 2 inhibitors. These agents are tetrabenazine (Xenazine, Lundbeck), deutetrabenazine (Austedo XR, Teva), and valbenazine (Ingrezza, Neurocrine Biosciences).
“These drugs can treat the chorea, but they also can help with some of the other motor features. For example, if a patient has chorea in the legs and you treat it, then maybe they’re walking will get better, or if they have chorea in the mouth and you treat the chorea, then maybe their speech and swallowing may improve,” Victor Sung, MD, professor of neurology and director of the Huntington’s Disease Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in an interview.
Mood and behavioral symptoms associated with Huntington’s disease – depression, anxiety, irritability, impulsivity, etc – can be managed with off-label use of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic agents.
“When it comes to the cognitive symptoms, that’s a big gap where we don’t have anything that’s [Food and Drug Administration] approved for Huntington’s disease,” Dr. Sung said.
Agents used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, such as cholinesterase inhibitors and the glutamate receptor antagonist memantine, have been studied extensively for preservation of cognition in Huntington’s disease, but have not shown significant benefit.
Dr. Sung said that one promising approach to the problem of cognitive protection in Huntington’s disease is the investigational agent dalzanemdor (SAGE-718), an N-methyl-D-aspartic (NMDA) acid receptor positive allosteric modulator. The drug is in development for cognitive disorders associated with NMDA receptor dysfunction, including Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
In the phase 2 SURVEYOR trial, which was not powered to show efficacy of dalzanemdor over placebo, patients with Huntington’s disease reportedly tolerated the drug well, with treatment-related adverse events primarily mild or moderate in severity.
As of this writing dalzanemdor is being evaluated for efficacy, compared with placebo, in the phase 2 DIMENSION trial. The primary endpoint of this trial is a change from baseline in composite score of the Huntington’s Disease Cognitive Assessment Battery.
Disease-Modifying Therapies
As previously noted, although there is no cure for Huntington’s disease, neurology investigators are developing new strategies for delaying, stalling, or even preventing disease progression.
“There are so many different approaches, it’s hard to know where to start,” Christopher A. Ross, MD, director of the Huntington’s Disease Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said in an interview.
The most actively investigated approach may be huntingtin-lowering therapies, based on the supposition that mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT) is the primary toxin in Huntington’s disease.
“What you need to do is in some way lower it, and there are a number of different ways to do that: antinsense olignoclueotides, small interfering RNA, CRISPR Cas, or other gene-editing techniques, as well as gene therapy with an adenoviral vector” he said.
Gene Therapy
Dr. Ross cited as promising a phase 1/2 clinical trial of an investigational gene therapy, AMT-130 (uniQure), which consists of an adeno-associated virus vector and a gene encoding a microRNA that is designed to recognize, bind, and nonselectively lower both mHTT and wild-type HTT.
The compound is injected directly into the corpus striatum. It was demonstrated to decrease signs of Huntington’s disease in animal models, and interim data on 29 patients with Huntington’s disease followed for up to 24 months showed a statically significant, dose-dependent slowing of Huntington’s disease progression and lowering of neurofilament light protein, a marker for neuronal degeneration in Huntington’s disease, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
AMT-130 targets exon 1 of the HTT gene, which appears to be an important target, Dr. Ross commented.
“The huntingtin protein is really big. The polyglutamine expansion, which is what causes the toxicity, is right at the N-terminus of exon 1, and there is increasingly good evidence that you can have an exon 1 misspliced protein product which causes the toxicity, so it may be especially important to lower Huntington by targeting exon 1,” he said.
Oral Splicing Modifier
PTC Therapeutics, based in New Jersey, is developing PTC518, an oral small molecule drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier and is reported to target mutant huntingtin protein.
The drug is a splicing modifier that promotes insertion of a premature stop codon to HTT mRNA, thereby degrading and lowering the HTT levels.5
In June 2024, the company reported that, in the phase 2a PIVOT-HD study of PTC518 in patients with Huntington’s disease, 12 months of treatment was associated with a dose-dependent lowering of mHTT in blood and CSF in an interim cohort.
“In addition, favorable trends were demonstrated on several relevant Huntington’s disease clinical assessments including Total Motor Score and Composite Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale. Furthermore, following 12 months of treatment, PTC518 continues to be safe and well tolerated,” the company stated in a press release.
Antisense Oligonucleotides
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are short strands of DNA or RNA that bind to RNA sequences in faulty genes to modify production of target proteins.
One such drug, tominersen, developed jointly by Ionis and Roche, initially showed promise in a phase 1/2 trial for lowering mHTT in CSF without serious adverse events. But in a phase 3 trial, the intrathecally delivered agent was halted after an independent data monitoring committee recommended halting the trial, which Roche ended in 2021. The company reported in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine that people in the high-dosage treatment group did measurably worse – although it remains unclear whether this was caused by excess protein lowering or an off-target effect.6 The tominersen program was the first to demonstrate that it was possible to lower HTT with an intervention, and the companies reported that they are continuing the agent’s development program.
Wave Life Sciences is developing an ASO, labeled WVE-003, designed to target a single-nucleotide polymorphism associated with the mHTT mRNA transcript within HTT. The company says that targeting the single-nucleotide polymorphism should allow lowering of expression of the mHTT will preserving wild-type HTT. This approach has the potential for therapies to prevent disease progression during the prodromal period, the company states.
Somatic Expansion
Dr. Furr Stimming and Dr. Ross both noted that there is considerable research interest into recently identified genetic modifiers that are believed to influence somatic instability, which in turn leads to somatic expansion.
“That seems to happen selectively in the neurons that are affected in Huntington’s disease. So a big puzzle for all of the neurodegenerative diseases is why are certain regions of the brain affected and other regions not? And it looks like, for the repeat expansion, this idea of somatic expansion seems to be increasingly central,” Dr. Ross said.
“The really exciting idea here is that, if somatic expansion is critical to the disease process and you could slow it down or stop it, you could go very early and potentially not just slow the progression of the disease once it starts, but conceivably even delay or possibly prevent the onset of Huntington’s disease,” he said.
Does HTT Lowering Mediate Progression?
“The next question is what does this mean clinically? Does lowering mutant huntingtin protein levels, and wild type for that matter, actually slow disease progression, which can be challenging to measure in a disease that is relatively slowly progressive?,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
One important tool to help answer this question, she noted, is the Huntington’s Disease Integrated Staging System (HDISS), first described in 2022.7 The consensus-based system incorporates biological, clinical, and functional assessments, and characterizes patients from birth by stages, from stage 0 (persons who carry the mutation but have no detectable pathology), to stage 1 (measurable indicators of underlying pathophysiology), stage 2 (a detectable clinical phenotype), and finally to stage 3 (decline in function).
“The goal of the HDISS, which is designed for clinical research purposes, is to try to enroll individuals into clinical trials earlier rather than later, trying to get pharmaceutical companies and others to take advantage of the period prior to significant neurodegeneration occurring. Like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, by the time we make a clinical diagnose significant neurodegeneration has occurred, so we really want to take advantage of the prodromal period to intervene with these potential disease-modifying therapies,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
“At the end of the day, I suspect that we will not have just one effective disease-modifying therapy. I suspect that it will be a multifacted approach. We envision that we would hit the huntingtin protein from a few different angles. I envision that we would not only modify in some form or fashion production of the mutant huntingtin protein, but also try to influence the genetic modifiers that we think are important in somatic instability and expansion, which likely contributes to the rate of progression and symptom severity,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
References
1. Huntington G. On Chorea. Reprinted in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 2003;15(1):109-112. doi: 10.1176/jnp.15.1.109.
2. Kaemmerer WF and Grondin RC. Degener Neurol Neuromuscul Dis. 2019 Mar 8;9:3-17. doi: 10.2147/DNND.S163808.
3. Jimenez-Sanchez M et al. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2017 Jul 5;7(7):a024240. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a024240.
4. Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Overview of Huntington’s Disease. https://hdsa.org/what-is-hd/overview-of-huntingtons-disease/.
5. Beers B et al. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2022;93:A96. https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/93/Suppl_1/A96.1.
6. McColgan P et al. N Engl J Med. 2023 Dec 7;389(23):2203-2205. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2300400.
7. Tabrizi SJ et al. Lancet Neurol. 2022 Jul;21(7):632-644. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(22)00120-X.
Much progress has been made in managing the symptoms of Huntington’s disease, but the real excitement lies in the development of disease-modifying drugs and genetic therapy.
In April 1872, The Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia published a roughly 3,000-word paper, titled “On Chorea,” by George Huntington, a 22-year-old family practice physician recently graduated from Columbia University, New York City.
“Chorea is essentially a disease of the nervous system. The name ‘chorea’ is given to the disease on account of the dancing propensities of those who are affected by it, and it is a very appropriate designation,” he wrote in the introduction.
Toward the end of the paper Dr. Huntington described a “hereditary chorea” that he had observed while on professional rounds with his father, also a physician, in towns on the eastern end of Long Island in New York.
“It is spoken of by those in whose veins the seeds of the disease are known to exist, with a kind of horror, and not at all alluded to except through dire necessity, when it is mentioned as ‘that disorder,’ ” he wrote, noting later that “I have never known a recovery or even an amelioration of symptoms in this form of chorea; when once it begins it clings to the bitter end.”1
It wasn’t until 1993 that a team of investigators identified the gene responsible for the neurodegenerative disorder we now know as Huntington’s disease.
That discovery sparked hope for better treatments and a cure, but progress over the last 31 years has been incremental. Nonetheless, recent intensive research into novel approaches for treating Huntington’s disease have considerably brightened prospects for patients and caregivers, experts say.
“This is a devastating neurodegenerative disease and in talking to families that I have had the privilege and honor of following, I hear from them that ‘in 1993 when the gene was identified and my family member — parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle — had Huntington’s, we thought that there would be a curative or disease-modifying therapy in no time,’ ” said Erin Furr Stimming, MD, FAAN, FANA professor of neurology and Memorial Hermann Endowed Chair at the McGovern Medical School at University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.
“Here we are in 2024. I think our families are still so incredibly resilient and courageous, and they are willing and able to participate in clinical trials. Families in the Huntington’s disease community at large are really ready to have trials that do, in fact, demonstrate some evidence of slowing of disease progression. It’s an exciting time,” she said in an interview.
Repeating Nucleotides
Huntington’s disease is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene (HTT), which encodes for the huntingtin protein (HTT). The multiple repeats result in expanded expression of mutant HTT. The mutated protein disrupts normal cellular processes, alters intracellular calcium homeostasis, and interferes with gene transcription, leading to progressive degeneration of neurons, and to a hallmark Huntington’s disease triad consisting of movement disorders, cognitive decline, and mood/behavioral issues.
The number of repeats determines the severity of disease and the age of onset. In nonaffected persons the gene contains about 20 CAG repeats, but as genetics research dating from the 1990s has shown, a single HTT allele containing more than 40 CAG repeats will inevitably result in disease, whereas carriers with fewer than 36 repeats on both alleles will remain unaffected.2
The prevalence of the mutation in Western populations is estimated to be from 4 to 10 per 100,000.3
The disease usually manifests first in adults aged 30-50 years but may also occur in children or adolescents and young adults. Early symptoms often include a decline in executive function that may be noticeable to the patient’s family and friends, mood changes, and chorea.
“Because of the uncontrolled movements (chorea), a person with Huntington’s disease may lose a lot of weight without intending to, and may have trouble walking, balancing, and moving around safely. They will eventually lose the ability to work, drive, and manage tasks at home, and may qualify for disability benefits. Over time, the individual will develop difficulty with speaking and swallowing, and their movements will become slow and stiff. People with advanced Huntington’s disease need full-time care to help with their day-to-day activities, and they ultimately succumb to pneumonia, heart failure, or other complications,” according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.4
Managing Symptoms
say neurologists.
There are currently three medications approved for the treatment of chorea, all in the class of agents known as vesicular monoamine transporter 2 inhibitors. These agents are tetrabenazine (Xenazine, Lundbeck), deutetrabenazine (Austedo XR, Teva), and valbenazine (Ingrezza, Neurocrine Biosciences).
“These drugs can treat the chorea, but they also can help with some of the other motor features. For example, if a patient has chorea in the legs and you treat it, then maybe they’re walking will get better, or if they have chorea in the mouth and you treat the chorea, then maybe their speech and swallowing may improve,” Victor Sung, MD, professor of neurology and director of the Huntington’s Disease Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in an interview.
Mood and behavioral symptoms associated with Huntington’s disease – depression, anxiety, irritability, impulsivity, etc – can be managed with off-label use of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic agents.
“When it comes to the cognitive symptoms, that’s a big gap where we don’t have anything that’s [Food and Drug Administration] approved for Huntington’s disease,” Dr. Sung said.
Agents used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, such as cholinesterase inhibitors and the glutamate receptor antagonist memantine, have been studied extensively for preservation of cognition in Huntington’s disease, but have not shown significant benefit.
Dr. Sung said that one promising approach to the problem of cognitive protection in Huntington’s disease is the investigational agent dalzanemdor (SAGE-718), an N-methyl-D-aspartic (NMDA) acid receptor positive allosteric modulator. The drug is in development for cognitive disorders associated with NMDA receptor dysfunction, including Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
In the phase 2 SURVEYOR trial, which was not powered to show efficacy of dalzanemdor over placebo, patients with Huntington’s disease reportedly tolerated the drug well, with treatment-related adverse events primarily mild or moderate in severity.
As of this writing dalzanemdor is being evaluated for efficacy, compared with placebo, in the phase 2 DIMENSION trial. The primary endpoint of this trial is a change from baseline in composite score of the Huntington’s Disease Cognitive Assessment Battery.
Disease-Modifying Therapies
As previously noted, although there is no cure for Huntington’s disease, neurology investigators are developing new strategies for delaying, stalling, or even preventing disease progression.
“There are so many different approaches, it’s hard to know where to start,” Christopher A. Ross, MD, director of the Huntington’s Disease Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said in an interview.
The most actively investigated approach may be huntingtin-lowering therapies, based on the supposition that mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT) is the primary toxin in Huntington’s disease.
“What you need to do is in some way lower it, and there are a number of different ways to do that: antinsense olignoclueotides, small interfering RNA, CRISPR Cas, or other gene-editing techniques, as well as gene therapy with an adenoviral vector” he said.
Gene Therapy
Dr. Ross cited as promising a phase 1/2 clinical trial of an investigational gene therapy, AMT-130 (uniQure), which consists of an adeno-associated virus vector and a gene encoding a microRNA that is designed to recognize, bind, and nonselectively lower both mHTT and wild-type HTT.
The compound is injected directly into the corpus striatum. It was demonstrated to decrease signs of Huntington’s disease in animal models, and interim data on 29 patients with Huntington’s disease followed for up to 24 months showed a statically significant, dose-dependent slowing of Huntington’s disease progression and lowering of neurofilament light protein, a marker for neuronal degeneration in Huntington’s disease, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
AMT-130 targets exon 1 of the HTT gene, which appears to be an important target, Dr. Ross commented.
“The huntingtin protein is really big. The polyglutamine expansion, which is what causes the toxicity, is right at the N-terminus of exon 1, and there is increasingly good evidence that you can have an exon 1 misspliced protein product which causes the toxicity, so it may be especially important to lower Huntington by targeting exon 1,” he said.
Oral Splicing Modifier
PTC Therapeutics, based in New Jersey, is developing PTC518, an oral small molecule drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier and is reported to target mutant huntingtin protein.
The drug is a splicing modifier that promotes insertion of a premature stop codon to HTT mRNA, thereby degrading and lowering the HTT levels.5
In June 2024, the company reported that, in the phase 2a PIVOT-HD study of PTC518 in patients with Huntington’s disease, 12 months of treatment was associated with a dose-dependent lowering of mHTT in blood and CSF in an interim cohort.
“In addition, favorable trends were demonstrated on several relevant Huntington’s disease clinical assessments including Total Motor Score and Composite Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale. Furthermore, following 12 months of treatment, PTC518 continues to be safe and well tolerated,” the company stated in a press release.
Antisense Oligonucleotides
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are short strands of DNA or RNA that bind to RNA sequences in faulty genes to modify production of target proteins.
One such drug, tominersen, developed jointly by Ionis and Roche, initially showed promise in a phase 1/2 trial for lowering mHTT in CSF without serious adverse events. But in a phase 3 trial, the intrathecally delivered agent was halted after an independent data monitoring committee recommended halting the trial, which Roche ended in 2021. The company reported in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine that people in the high-dosage treatment group did measurably worse – although it remains unclear whether this was caused by excess protein lowering or an off-target effect.6 The tominersen program was the first to demonstrate that it was possible to lower HTT with an intervention, and the companies reported that they are continuing the agent’s development program.
Wave Life Sciences is developing an ASO, labeled WVE-003, designed to target a single-nucleotide polymorphism associated with the mHTT mRNA transcript within HTT. The company says that targeting the single-nucleotide polymorphism should allow lowering of expression of the mHTT will preserving wild-type HTT. This approach has the potential for therapies to prevent disease progression during the prodromal period, the company states.
Somatic Expansion
Dr. Furr Stimming and Dr. Ross both noted that there is considerable research interest into recently identified genetic modifiers that are believed to influence somatic instability, which in turn leads to somatic expansion.
“That seems to happen selectively in the neurons that are affected in Huntington’s disease. So a big puzzle for all of the neurodegenerative diseases is why are certain regions of the brain affected and other regions not? And it looks like, for the repeat expansion, this idea of somatic expansion seems to be increasingly central,” Dr. Ross said.
“The really exciting idea here is that, if somatic expansion is critical to the disease process and you could slow it down or stop it, you could go very early and potentially not just slow the progression of the disease once it starts, but conceivably even delay or possibly prevent the onset of Huntington’s disease,” he said.
Does HTT Lowering Mediate Progression?
“The next question is what does this mean clinically? Does lowering mutant huntingtin protein levels, and wild type for that matter, actually slow disease progression, which can be challenging to measure in a disease that is relatively slowly progressive?,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
One important tool to help answer this question, she noted, is the Huntington’s Disease Integrated Staging System (HDISS), first described in 2022.7 The consensus-based system incorporates biological, clinical, and functional assessments, and characterizes patients from birth by stages, from stage 0 (persons who carry the mutation but have no detectable pathology), to stage 1 (measurable indicators of underlying pathophysiology), stage 2 (a detectable clinical phenotype), and finally to stage 3 (decline in function).
“The goal of the HDISS, which is designed for clinical research purposes, is to try to enroll individuals into clinical trials earlier rather than later, trying to get pharmaceutical companies and others to take advantage of the period prior to significant neurodegeneration occurring. Like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, by the time we make a clinical diagnose significant neurodegeneration has occurred, so we really want to take advantage of the prodromal period to intervene with these potential disease-modifying therapies,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
“At the end of the day, I suspect that we will not have just one effective disease-modifying therapy. I suspect that it will be a multifacted approach. We envision that we would hit the huntingtin protein from a few different angles. I envision that we would not only modify in some form or fashion production of the mutant huntingtin protein, but also try to influence the genetic modifiers that we think are important in somatic instability and expansion, which likely contributes to the rate of progression and symptom severity,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
References
1. Huntington G. On Chorea. Reprinted in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 2003;15(1):109-112. doi: 10.1176/jnp.15.1.109.
2. Kaemmerer WF and Grondin RC. Degener Neurol Neuromuscul Dis. 2019 Mar 8;9:3-17. doi: 10.2147/DNND.S163808.
3. Jimenez-Sanchez M et al. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2017 Jul 5;7(7):a024240. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a024240.
4. Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Overview of Huntington’s Disease. https://hdsa.org/what-is-hd/overview-of-huntingtons-disease/.
5. Beers B et al. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2022;93:A96. https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/93/Suppl_1/A96.1.
6. McColgan P et al. N Engl J Med. 2023 Dec 7;389(23):2203-2205. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2300400.
7. Tabrizi SJ et al. Lancet Neurol. 2022 Jul;21(7):632-644. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(22)00120-X.
Much progress has been made in managing the symptoms of Huntington’s disease, but the real excitement lies in the development of disease-modifying drugs and genetic therapy.
In April 1872, The Medical and Surgical Reporter of Philadelphia published a roughly 3,000-word paper, titled “On Chorea,” by George Huntington, a 22-year-old family practice physician recently graduated from Columbia University, New York City.
“Chorea is essentially a disease of the nervous system. The name ‘chorea’ is given to the disease on account of the dancing propensities of those who are affected by it, and it is a very appropriate designation,” he wrote in the introduction.
Toward the end of the paper Dr. Huntington described a “hereditary chorea” that he had observed while on professional rounds with his father, also a physician, in towns on the eastern end of Long Island in New York.
“It is spoken of by those in whose veins the seeds of the disease are known to exist, with a kind of horror, and not at all alluded to except through dire necessity, when it is mentioned as ‘that disorder,’ ” he wrote, noting later that “I have never known a recovery or even an amelioration of symptoms in this form of chorea; when once it begins it clings to the bitter end.”1
It wasn’t until 1993 that a team of investigators identified the gene responsible for the neurodegenerative disorder we now know as Huntington’s disease.
That discovery sparked hope for better treatments and a cure, but progress over the last 31 years has been incremental. Nonetheless, recent intensive research into novel approaches for treating Huntington’s disease have considerably brightened prospects for patients and caregivers, experts say.
“This is a devastating neurodegenerative disease and in talking to families that I have had the privilege and honor of following, I hear from them that ‘in 1993 when the gene was identified and my family member — parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle — had Huntington’s, we thought that there would be a curative or disease-modifying therapy in no time,’ ” said Erin Furr Stimming, MD, FAAN, FANA professor of neurology and Memorial Hermann Endowed Chair at the McGovern Medical School at University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston.
“Here we are in 2024. I think our families are still so incredibly resilient and courageous, and they are willing and able to participate in clinical trials. Families in the Huntington’s disease community at large are really ready to have trials that do, in fact, demonstrate some evidence of slowing of disease progression. It’s an exciting time,” she said in an interview.
Repeating Nucleotides
Huntington’s disease is an autosomal dominant neurodegenerative disorder caused by an expansion of a CAG trinucleotide repeat in exon 1 of the huntingtin gene (HTT), which encodes for the huntingtin protein (HTT). The multiple repeats result in expanded expression of mutant HTT. The mutated protein disrupts normal cellular processes, alters intracellular calcium homeostasis, and interferes with gene transcription, leading to progressive degeneration of neurons, and to a hallmark Huntington’s disease triad consisting of movement disorders, cognitive decline, and mood/behavioral issues.
The number of repeats determines the severity of disease and the age of onset. In nonaffected persons the gene contains about 20 CAG repeats, but as genetics research dating from the 1990s has shown, a single HTT allele containing more than 40 CAG repeats will inevitably result in disease, whereas carriers with fewer than 36 repeats on both alleles will remain unaffected.2
The prevalence of the mutation in Western populations is estimated to be from 4 to 10 per 100,000.3
The disease usually manifests first in adults aged 30-50 years but may also occur in children or adolescents and young adults. Early symptoms often include a decline in executive function that may be noticeable to the patient’s family and friends, mood changes, and chorea.
“Because of the uncontrolled movements (chorea), a person with Huntington’s disease may lose a lot of weight without intending to, and may have trouble walking, balancing, and moving around safely. They will eventually lose the ability to work, drive, and manage tasks at home, and may qualify for disability benefits. Over time, the individual will develop difficulty with speaking and swallowing, and their movements will become slow and stiff. People with advanced Huntington’s disease need full-time care to help with their day-to-day activities, and they ultimately succumb to pneumonia, heart failure, or other complications,” according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.4
Managing Symptoms
say neurologists.
There are currently three medications approved for the treatment of chorea, all in the class of agents known as vesicular monoamine transporter 2 inhibitors. These agents are tetrabenazine (Xenazine, Lundbeck), deutetrabenazine (Austedo XR, Teva), and valbenazine (Ingrezza, Neurocrine Biosciences).
“These drugs can treat the chorea, but they also can help with some of the other motor features. For example, if a patient has chorea in the legs and you treat it, then maybe they’re walking will get better, or if they have chorea in the mouth and you treat the chorea, then maybe their speech and swallowing may improve,” Victor Sung, MD, professor of neurology and director of the Huntington’s Disease Clinic at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said in an interview.
Mood and behavioral symptoms associated with Huntington’s disease – depression, anxiety, irritability, impulsivity, etc – can be managed with off-label use of antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic agents.
“When it comes to the cognitive symptoms, that’s a big gap where we don’t have anything that’s [Food and Drug Administration] approved for Huntington’s disease,” Dr. Sung said.
Agents used to treat Alzheimer’s disease, such as cholinesterase inhibitors and the glutamate receptor antagonist memantine, have been studied extensively for preservation of cognition in Huntington’s disease, but have not shown significant benefit.
Dr. Sung said that one promising approach to the problem of cognitive protection in Huntington’s disease is the investigational agent dalzanemdor (SAGE-718), an N-methyl-D-aspartic (NMDA) acid receptor positive allosteric modulator. The drug is in development for cognitive disorders associated with NMDA receptor dysfunction, including Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
In the phase 2 SURVEYOR trial, which was not powered to show efficacy of dalzanemdor over placebo, patients with Huntington’s disease reportedly tolerated the drug well, with treatment-related adverse events primarily mild or moderate in severity.
As of this writing dalzanemdor is being evaluated for efficacy, compared with placebo, in the phase 2 DIMENSION trial. The primary endpoint of this trial is a change from baseline in composite score of the Huntington’s Disease Cognitive Assessment Battery.
Disease-Modifying Therapies
As previously noted, although there is no cure for Huntington’s disease, neurology investigators are developing new strategies for delaying, stalling, or even preventing disease progression.
“There are so many different approaches, it’s hard to know where to start,” Christopher A. Ross, MD, director of the Huntington’s Disease Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, said in an interview.
The most actively investigated approach may be huntingtin-lowering therapies, based on the supposition that mutant huntingtin protein (mHTT) is the primary toxin in Huntington’s disease.
“What you need to do is in some way lower it, and there are a number of different ways to do that: antinsense olignoclueotides, small interfering RNA, CRISPR Cas, or other gene-editing techniques, as well as gene therapy with an adenoviral vector” he said.
Gene Therapy
Dr. Ross cited as promising a phase 1/2 clinical trial of an investigational gene therapy, AMT-130 (uniQure), which consists of an adeno-associated virus vector and a gene encoding a microRNA that is designed to recognize, bind, and nonselectively lower both mHTT and wild-type HTT.
The compound is injected directly into the corpus striatum. It was demonstrated to decrease signs of Huntington’s disease in animal models, and interim data on 29 patients with Huntington’s disease followed for up to 24 months showed a statically significant, dose-dependent slowing of Huntington’s disease progression and lowering of neurofilament light protein, a marker for neuronal degeneration in Huntington’s disease, in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).
AMT-130 targets exon 1 of the HTT gene, which appears to be an important target, Dr. Ross commented.
“The huntingtin protein is really big. The polyglutamine expansion, which is what causes the toxicity, is right at the N-terminus of exon 1, and there is increasingly good evidence that you can have an exon 1 misspliced protein product which causes the toxicity, so it may be especially important to lower Huntington by targeting exon 1,” he said.
Oral Splicing Modifier
PTC Therapeutics, based in New Jersey, is developing PTC518, an oral small molecule drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier and is reported to target mutant huntingtin protein.
The drug is a splicing modifier that promotes insertion of a premature stop codon to HTT mRNA, thereby degrading and lowering the HTT levels.5
In June 2024, the company reported that, in the phase 2a PIVOT-HD study of PTC518 in patients with Huntington’s disease, 12 months of treatment was associated with a dose-dependent lowering of mHTT in blood and CSF in an interim cohort.
“In addition, favorable trends were demonstrated on several relevant Huntington’s disease clinical assessments including Total Motor Score and Composite Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale. Furthermore, following 12 months of treatment, PTC518 continues to be safe and well tolerated,” the company stated in a press release.
Antisense Oligonucleotides
Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are short strands of DNA or RNA that bind to RNA sequences in faulty genes to modify production of target proteins.
One such drug, tominersen, developed jointly by Ionis and Roche, initially showed promise in a phase 1/2 trial for lowering mHTT in CSF without serious adverse events. But in a phase 3 trial, the intrathecally delivered agent was halted after an independent data monitoring committee recommended halting the trial, which Roche ended in 2021. The company reported in a letter to The New England Journal of Medicine that people in the high-dosage treatment group did measurably worse – although it remains unclear whether this was caused by excess protein lowering or an off-target effect.6 The tominersen program was the first to demonstrate that it was possible to lower HTT with an intervention, and the companies reported that they are continuing the agent’s development program.
Wave Life Sciences is developing an ASO, labeled WVE-003, designed to target a single-nucleotide polymorphism associated with the mHTT mRNA transcript within HTT. The company says that targeting the single-nucleotide polymorphism should allow lowering of expression of the mHTT will preserving wild-type HTT. This approach has the potential for therapies to prevent disease progression during the prodromal period, the company states.
Somatic Expansion
Dr. Furr Stimming and Dr. Ross both noted that there is considerable research interest into recently identified genetic modifiers that are believed to influence somatic instability, which in turn leads to somatic expansion.
“That seems to happen selectively in the neurons that are affected in Huntington’s disease. So a big puzzle for all of the neurodegenerative diseases is why are certain regions of the brain affected and other regions not? And it looks like, for the repeat expansion, this idea of somatic expansion seems to be increasingly central,” Dr. Ross said.
“The really exciting idea here is that, if somatic expansion is critical to the disease process and you could slow it down or stop it, you could go very early and potentially not just slow the progression of the disease once it starts, but conceivably even delay or possibly prevent the onset of Huntington’s disease,” he said.
Does HTT Lowering Mediate Progression?
“The next question is what does this mean clinically? Does lowering mutant huntingtin protein levels, and wild type for that matter, actually slow disease progression, which can be challenging to measure in a disease that is relatively slowly progressive?,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
One important tool to help answer this question, she noted, is the Huntington’s Disease Integrated Staging System (HDISS), first described in 2022.7 The consensus-based system incorporates biological, clinical, and functional assessments, and characterizes patients from birth by stages, from stage 0 (persons who carry the mutation but have no detectable pathology), to stage 1 (measurable indicators of underlying pathophysiology), stage 2 (a detectable clinical phenotype), and finally to stage 3 (decline in function).
“The goal of the HDISS, which is designed for clinical research purposes, is to try to enroll individuals into clinical trials earlier rather than later, trying to get pharmaceutical companies and others to take advantage of the period prior to significant neurodegeneration occurring. Like Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, by the time we make a clinical diagnose significant neurodegeneration has occurred, so we really want to take advantage of the prodromal period to intervene with these potential disease-modifying therapies,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
“At the end of the day, I suspect that we will not have just one effective disease-modifying therapy. I suspect that it will be a multifacted approach. We envision that we would hit the huntingtin protein from a few different angles. I envision that we would not only modify in some form or fashion production of the mutant huntingtin protein, but also try to influence the genetic modifiers that we think are important in somatic instability and expansion, which likely contributes to the rate of progression and symptom severity,” Dr. Furr Stimming said.
References
1. Huntington G. On Chorea. Reprinted in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 2003;15(1):109-112. doi: 10.1176/jnp.15.1.109.
2. Kaemmerer WF and Grondin RC. Degener Neurol Neuromuscul Dis. 2019 Mar 8;9:3-17. doi: 10.2147/DNND.S163808.
3. Jimenez-Sanchez M et al. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. 2017 Jul 5;7(7):a024240. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a024240.
4. Huntington’s Disease Society of America. Overview of Huntington’s Disease. https://hdsa.org/what-is-hd/overview-of-huntingtons-disease/.
5. Beers B et al. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 2022;93:A96. https://jnnp.bmj.com/content/93/Suppl_1/A96.1.
6. McColgan P et al. N Engl J Med. 2023 Dec 7;389(23):2203-2205. doi: 10.1056/NEJMc2300400.
7. Tabrizi SJ et al. Lancet Neurol. 2022 Jul;21(7):632-644. doi: 10.1016/S1474-4422(22)00120-X.
Ensifentrine for COPD: Out of reach for many?
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at an unreasonably high annual cost, authors of a cost and effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second within 0-12 hours of administration, compared with placebo. In addition, patients were reported to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High cost barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston, Massachusetts–based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, the therapeutic edge offered by ensifentrine is outweighed by the annual wholesale acquisition cost that its maker, Vernona Pharma, has established: $35,400, which far exceeds the estimated health-benefit price of $7,500-$12,700, according to ICER. ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides.”
As previously reported, as many as one in six persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses because of high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher-volume sales, affording the drugmaker a comparable profit with the higher-cost but lower-volume option.
Good drug, high price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added healthcare costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug not yet available?
However, providers have not yet had direct experience with the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of Advance Practice Provider and Clinical Services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants, president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advance Practice Providers, and a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
She learned “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the 3rd quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no relevant disclosures.
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at an unreasonably high annual cost, authors of a cost and effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second within 0-12 hours of administration, compared with placebo. In addition, patients were reported to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High cost barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston, Massachusetts–based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, the therapeutic edge offered by ensifentrine is outweighed by the annual wholesale acquisition cost that its maker, Vernona Pharma, has established: $35,400, which far exceeds the estimated health-benefit price of $7,500-$12,700, according to ICER. ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides.”
As previously reported, as many as one in six persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses because of high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher-volume sales, affording the drugmaker a comparable profit with the higher-cost but lower-volume option.
Good drug, high price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added healthcare costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug not yet available?
However, providers have not yet had direct experience with the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of Advance Practice Provider and Clinical Services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants, president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advance Practice Providers, and a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
She learned “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the 3rd quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no relevant disclosures.
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at an unreasonably high annual cost, authors of a cost and effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second within 0-12 hours of administration, compared with placebo. In addition, patients were reported to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High cost barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston, Massachusetts–based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, the therapeutic edge offered by ensifentrine is outweighed by the annual wholesale acquisition cost that its maker, Vernona Pharma, has established: $35,400, which far exceeds the estimated health-benefit price of $7,500-$12,700, according to ICER. ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides.”
As previously reported, as many as one in six persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses because of high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher-volume sales, affording the drugmaker a comparable profit with the higher-cost but lower-volume option.
Good drug, high price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added healthcare costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug not yet available?
However, providers have not yet had direct experience with the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of Advance Practice Provider and Clinical Services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants, president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advance Practice Providers, and a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
She learned “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the 3rd quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no relevant disclosures.
Could This COPD Treatment’s Cost Put It Out of Reach for Many?
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at a high annual cost, authors of a cost-effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) within 0-12 hours of administration compared with placebo. In addition, patients were found to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High Cost Barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER, in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides,” he said.
As previously reported, as many as 1 in 6 persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses owing to high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher volume sales, affording the drug maker a comparable profit to the higher cost but lower volume option.
Good Drug, High Price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added health care costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe, and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug Not Yet Available?
However, providers have not yet had experience to gauge the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of advance practice provider and clinical services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants and president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advanced Practice Providers. She learned that “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the third quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it, and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area, so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no disclosures relevant to ensifentrine or Verona Pharma. Ms. Young is a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at a high annual cost, authors of a cost-effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) within 0-12 hours of administration compared with placebo. In addition, patients were found to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High Cost Barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER, in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides,” he said.
As previously reported, as many as 1 in 6 persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses owing to high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher volume sales, affording the drug maker a comparable profit to the higher cost but lower volume option.
Good Drug, High Price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added health care costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe, and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug Not Yet Available?
However, providers have not yet had experience to gauge the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of advance practice provider and clinical services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants and president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advanced Practice Providers. She learned that “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the third quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it, and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area, so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no disclosures relevant to ensifentrine or Verona Pharma. Ms. Young is a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
Ensifentrine (Ohtuvayre), a novel medication for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) recently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, has been shown to reduce COPD exacerbations and may improve the quality of life for patients, but these potential benefits come at a high annual cost, authors of a cost-effectiveness analysis say.
Ensifentrine is a first-in-class selective dual inhibitor of both phosphodiesterase 3 (PDE-3) and PDE-4, combining both bronchodilator and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory effects in a single molecule. The drug is delivered through a standard jet nebulizer.
In the phase 3 ENHANCE 1 and 2 trials, ensifentrine significantly improved lung function based on the primary outcome of average forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1) within 0-12 hours of administration compared with placebo. In addition, patients were found to tolerate the inhaled treatment well, with similar proportions of ensifentrine- and placebo-assigned patients reporting treatment-emergent adverse events. The most common treatment-emergent adverse events were nasopharyngitis, hypertension, and back pain, reported in < 3% of the ensifentrine group.
High Cost Barrier
But as authors of the analysis from the Boston-based Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) found, ICER is an independent, nonprofit research institute that conducts evidence-based reviews of healthcare interventions, including prescription drugs, other treatments, and diagnostic tests.
“Current evidence shows that ensifentrine decreases COPD exacerbations when used in combination with some current inhaled therapies, but there are uncertainties about how much benefit it may add to unstudied combinations of inhaled treatments,” said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER, in a statement.
In an interview, Dr. Rind noted that the high price of ensifentrine may lead payers to restrict access to an otherwise promising new therapy. “Obviously many drugs in the US are overpriced, and this one, too, looks like it is overpriced. That causes ongoing financial toxicity for individual patients and it causes problems for the entire US health system, because when we pay too much for drugs we don’t have money for other things. So I’m worried about the fact that this price is too high compared to the benefit it provides,” he said.
As previously reported, as many as 1 in 6 persons with COPD in the United States miss or delay COPD medication doses owing to high drug costs. “I think that the pricing they chose is going to cause lots of barriers to people getting access and that insurance companies will throw up barriers. Primary care physicians like me won’t even try to get approval for a drug like this given the hoops we will be made to jump through, and so fewer people will get this drug,” Dr. Rind said. He pointed out that a lower wholesale acquisition cost could encourage higher volume sales, affording the drug maker a comparable profit to the higher cost but lower volume option.
Good Drug, High Price
An independent appraisal committee for ICER determined that “current evidence is adequate to demonstrate a net health benefit for ensifentrine added to maintenance therapy when compared to maintenance therapy alone.”
But ICER also issued an access and affordability alert “to signal to stakeholders and policymakers that the amount of added health care costs associated with a new service may be difficult for the health system to absorb over the short term without displacing other needed services.” ICER recommends that payers should include coverage for smoking cessation therapies, and that drug manufacturers “set prices that will foster affordability and good access for all patients by aligning prices with the patient-centered therapeutic value of their treatments.”
“This looks like a pretty good drug,” Dr. Rind said. “It looks quite safe, and I think there will be a lot of patients, particularly those who are having frequent exacerbations, who this would be appropriate for, particularly once they’ve maxed out existing therapies, but maybe even earlier than that. And if the price comes down to the point that patients can really access this and providers can access it, people really should look at this as a potential therapy.”
Drug Not Yet Available?
However, providers have not yet had experience to gauge the new medication. “We haven’t been able to prescribe it yet,” said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, director of advance practice provider and clinical services for Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants and president and founder of the Association of Pulmonary Advanced Practice Providers. She learned that “they were going to release it to select specialty pharmacies in the third quarter of 2024. But all the ones we call do not have it, and no one knows who does. They haven’t sent any reps into the field in my area, so we don’t have any points of contact either,” she said.
Verona Pharma stated it anticipates ensifentrine to be available in the third quarter of 2024 “through an exclusive network of accredited specialty pharmacies.”
Funding for the ICER report came from nonprofit foundations. No funding came from health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, or life science companies. Dr. Rind had no disclosures relevant to ensifentrine or Verona Pharma. Ms. Young is a member of the CHEST Physician Editorial Board.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
Cost of Drugs Can Be Breathtaking for COPD Patients
For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the Global Initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease recommends long-term term pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic therapies based on each patient’s symptoms and disease severity.
Yet even the most effective drugs work only when patients take them as directed, and according to the World Health Organization, fewer than half of all patients worldwide are fully compliant with long-term COPD drug regimens.
And as a recent cross-sectional study showed, nearly one in six patients in the United States reported missing a COPD drug dose, lowering the dose, or delaying filling a prescription for financial reasons.
“I care for patients with COPD as their pulmonologist, and this is a very common problem that we see in clinical practice,” said Meredith McCormack, MD, a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician and associate director of the Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr. McCormack, a national spokesperson for The American Lung Association, said that she shows new patients the photos of all available inhalers and asks which ones they have and how they take them.
“I would say that a majority of the time people are taking their medicines slightly differently than prescribed, and often, this is due to cost,” she said.
Serious Consequences
Cost-related medication nonadherence (CRN), as investigators term it, can have major health effects and can be significantly more costly in the long run due to increased hospitalization rates, higher morbidity, and greater risk for COPD-related death associated with suboptimal care.
“For some patients even a month or two of being off medications increases the risk of having exacerbations, having more symptoms, [and] having a decline in their lung function,” said Douglas M. Beach, MD, a pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
In the aforementioned cross-sectional study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, Xin Wen, MD, from the Jiamusi (China) University School of Public Health, and colleagues looked at data on a representative sample of US adults who participated in the US National Health Interview Survey from 2013 through 2020.
The sample included 15,928 persons aged 18 years or older with a self-reported history of COPD who completed a CRN survey including the following questions:
During the past 12 months, have you
- Skipped medication doses to save money?
- Taken less medicine than prescribed to save money?
- Delayed filling a prescription to save money?
The investigators found that a weighted 18.56% of participants representing 2.39 million persons with COPD answered “yes” to one of the questions.
Translated into representative population numbers, that works out to an estimated 1.61 million persons with COPD missing doses, 1.72 million taking lower doses than those prescribed, and 2.03 million delaying filling prescriptions to save money.
A multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that those who were most likely to be nonadherent for financial reasons were patients younger than 65 years, women, persons with low family income, those who lacked health insurance, and patients with multiple comorbidities, the authors found.
Financial Barriers
One of the biggest barriers to COPD medication adherence is, somewhat paradoxically, insurance status, particularly Medicare, said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, from Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants.
“What’s so unfair about Medicare is that patients have to buy a drug plan, so they have to already pay for an extra plan to have access to drugs, and the plans vary because there are so many choices,” she said in an interview.
Elderly patients may be confused about the available options and may choose the Medicare Advantage plan with the lowest monthly premiums, which have the highest annual deductibles, usually in the $5000-and-up range, she said.
In addition, the Medicare Part D prescription coverage gap, commonly known as the “donut hole,” requires patients to pay a percentage of drug costs above a certain limit ($5030 in 2024) until a yearly out-of-pocket limit (currently $8000) is reached, after which the plan will again pick up most of the costs.
Although makers of inhalers have voluntarily agreed to limit monthly co-pays to $35 for uninsured patients, Medicare plans require insured patients to shell out considerably more, with 30 days of Trelegy Ellipta (fluticasone furoate, umeclidinium, and vilanterol) setting patients back nearly $350 per month, according to a recent search of costs for a United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan.
Chasing Lower-Cost Options
“I have a lot of patients who use Canadian pharmacies to try to get around it, and I have a lot of patients who make a trip to Mexico every year and load up. I have patients who don’t take their inhalers as they are supposed to in order to make them last longer, and I have patients who take the inhalers of other family members,” Ms. Young said.
Humayun Anjum, MD, FCCP, from Dallas Pulmonary and Critical Care in Dallas, Texas, said in an interview that when patients claim that a prescribed drug isn’t working as expected for them, financial pressures may be partly to blame.
“When you investigate a little bit more, that’s where things become a bit more clear, and the patient may say ‘yeah, I stopped using this inhaler because it was costing me 200 bucks a month and I’m already on other medications,’ ” he said.
He noted that, when possible, he will steer patients toward discount prescription services such as GoodRx, which offers discounts at local pharmacies, or Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy that offers generic versions of Advair Diskus (fluticasone propionate/salmeterol) at a 100-50 mcg dose for $94.70, a savings of $307.30 over retail pharmacies, according to the company’s website.
Dr. Beach noted that Beth Israel Deaconess has a pharmacist embedded in the pulmonary clinic who can help eligible patients get financial assistance to pay for their medications.
“The influencing factors of CRN are multifaceted and necessitating more rigorous research. Health policy interventions focusing on reducing drug costs, delaying disease progression, preventing exacerbations, and reducing the risk of comorbidities may improve the economic burden of COPD and its outcomes,” Dr. Wen and colleagues wrote.
The study by Dr. Wen and colleagues was funded by grants from Chinese national and academic sources. Dr. McCormack has served as a consultant to Aridis, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, MCG Diagnostics, ndd Medical Technologies, and UpToDate. Ms. Young, Dr. Anjum, and Dr. Beach reported no conflicts of interest.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the Global Initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease recommends long-term term pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic therapies based on each patient’s symptoms and disease severity.
Yet even the most effective drugs work only when patients take them as directed, and according to the World Health Organization, fewer than half of all patients worldwide are fully compliant with long-term COPD drug regimens.
And as a recent cross-sectional study showed, nearly one in six patients in the United States reported missing a COPD drug dose, lowering the dose, or delaying filling a prescription for financial reasons.
“I care for patients with COPD as their pulmonologist, and this is a very common problem that we see in clinical practice,” said Meredith McCormack, MD, a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician and associate director of the Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr. McCormack, a national spokesperson for The American Lung Association, said that she shows new patients the photos of all available inhalers and asks which ones they have and how they take them.
“I would say that a majority of the time people are taking their medicines slightly differently than prescribed, and often, this is due to cost,” she said.
Serious Consequences
Cost-related medication nonadherence (CRN), as investigators term it, can have major health effects and can be significantly more costly in the long run due to increased hospitalization rates, higher morbidity, and greater risk for COPD-related death associated with suboptimal care.
“For some patients even a month or two of being off medications increases the risk of having exacerbations, having more symptoms, [and] having a decline in their lung function,” said Douglas M. Beach, MD, a pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
In the aforementioned cross-sectional study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, Xin Wen, MD, from the Jiamusi (China) University School of Public Health, and colleagues looked at data on a representative sample of US adults who participated in the US National Health Interview Survey from 2013 through 2020.
The sample included 15,928 persons aged 18 years or older with a self-reported history of COPD who completed a CRN survey including the following questions:
During the past 12 months, have you
- Skipped medication doses to save money?
- Taken less medicine than prescribed to save money?
- Delayed filling a prescription to save money?
The investigators found that a weighted 18.56% of participants representing 2.39 million persons with COPD answered “yes” to one of the questions.
Translated into representative population numbers, that works out to an estimated 1.61 million persons with COPD missing doses, 1.72 million taking lower doses than those prescribed, and 2.03 million delaying filling prescriptions to save money.
A multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that those who were most likely to be nonadherent for financial reasons were patients younger than 65 years, women, persons with low family income, those who lacked health insurance, and patients with multiple comorbidities, the authors found.
Financial Barriers
One of the biggest barriers to COPD medication adherence is, somewhat paradoxically, insurance status, particularly Medicare, said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, from Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants.
“What’s so unfair about Medicare is that patients have to buy a drug plan, so they have to already pay for an extra plan to have access to drugs, and the plans vary because there are so many choices,” she said in an interview.
Elderly patients may be confused about the available options and may choose the Medicare Advantage plan with the lowest monthly premiums, which have the highest annual deductibles, usually in the $5000-and-up range, she said.
In addition, the Medicare Part D prescription coverage gap, commonly known as the “donut hole,” requires patients to pay a percentage of drug costs above a certain limit ($5030 in 2024) until a yearly out-of-pocket limit (currently $8000) is reached, after which the plan will again pick up most of the costs.
Although makers of inhalers have voluntarily agreed to limit monthly co-pays to $35 for uninsured patients, Medicare plans require insured patients to shell out considerably more, with 30 days of Trelegy Ellipta (fluticasone furoate, umeclidinium, and vilanterol) setting patients back nearly $350 per month, according to a recent search of costs for a United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan.
Chasing Lower-Cost Options
“I have a lot of patients who use Canadian pharmacies to try to get around it, and I have a lot of patients who make a trip to Mexico every year and load up. I have patients who don’t take their inhalers as they are supposed to in order to make them last longer, and I have patients who take the inhalers of other family members,” Ms. Young said.
Humayun Anjum, MD, FCCP, from Dallas Pulmonary and Critical Care in Dallas, Texas, said in an interview that when patients claim that a prescribed drug isn’t working as expected for them, financial pressures may be partly to blame.
“When you investigate a little bit more, that’s where things become a bit more clear, and the patient may say ‘yeah, I stopped using this inhaler because it was costing me 200 bucks a month and I’m already on other medications,’ ” he said.
He noted that, when possible, he will steer patients toward discount prescription services such as GoodRx, which offers discounts at local pharmacies, or Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy that offers generic versions of Advair Diskus (fluticasone propionate/salmeterol) at a 100-50 mcg dose for $94.70, a savings of $307.30 over retail pharmacies, according to the company’s website.
Dr. Beach noted that Beth Israel Deaconess has a pharmacist embedded in the pulmonary clinic who can help eligible patients get financial assistance to pay for their medications.
“The influencing factors of CRN are multifaceted and necessitating more rigorous research. Health policy interventions focusing on reducing drug costs, delaying disease progression, preventing exacerbations, and reducing the risk of comorbidities may improve the economic burden of COPD and its outcomes,” Dr. Wen and colleagues wrote.
The study by Dr. Wen and colleagues was funded by grants from Chinese national and academic sources. Dr. McCormack has served as a consultant to Aridis, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, MCG Diagnostics, ndd Medical Technologies, and UpToDate. Ms. Young, Dr. Anjum, and Dr. Beach reported no conflicts of interest.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
For patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the Global Initiative on Obstructive Lung Disease recommends long-term term pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic therapies based on each patient’s symptoms and disease severity.
Yet even the most effective drugs work only when patients take them as directed, and according to the World Health Organization, fewer than half of all patients worldwide are fully compliant with long-term COPD drug regimens.
And as a recent cross-sectional study showed, nearly one in six patients in the United States reported missing a COPD drug dose, lowering the dose, or delaying filling a prescription for financial reasons.
“I care for patients with COPD as their pulmonologist, and this is a very common problem that we see in clinical practice,” said Meredith McCormack, MD, a pulmonary and critical care medicine physician and associate director of the Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine Division at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Dr. McCormack, a national spokesperson for The American Lung Association, said that she shows new patients the photos of all available inhalers and asks which ones they have and how they take them.
“I would say that a majority of the time people are taking their medicines slightly differently than prescribed, and often, this is due to cost,” she said.
Serious Consequences
Cost-related medication nonadherence (CRN), as investigators term it, can have major health effects and can be significantly more costly in the long run due to increased hospitalization rates, higher morbidity, and greater risk for COPD-related death associated with suboptimal care.
“For some patients even a month or two of being off medications increases the risk of having exacerbations, having more symptoms, [and] having a decline in their lung function,” said Douglas M. Beach, MD, a pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
In the aforementioned cross-sectional study, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, Xin Wen, MD, from the Jiamusi (China) University School of Public Health, and colleagues looked at data on a representative sample of US adults who participated in the US National Health Interview Survey from 2013 through 2020.
The sample included 15,928 persons aged 18 years or older with a self-reported history of COPD who completed a CRN survey including the following questions:
During the past 12 months, have you
- Skipped medication doses to save money?
- Taken less medicine than prescribed to save money?
- Delayed filling a prescription to save money?
The investigators found that a weighted 18.56% of participants representing 2.39 million persons with COPD answered “yes” to one of the questions.
Translated into representative population numbers, that works out to an estimated 1.61 million persons with COPD missing doses, 1.72 million taking lower doses than those prescribed, and 2.03 million delaying filling prescriptions to save money.
A multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that those who were most likely to be nonadherent for financial reasons were patients younger than 65 years, women, persons with low family income, those who lacked health insurance, and patients with multiple comorbidities, the authors found.
Financial Barriers
One of the biggest barriers to COPD medication adherence is, somewhat paradoxically, insurance status, particularly Medicare, said Corinne Young, MSN, FNP-C, FCCP, from Colorado Springs Pulmonary Consultants.
“What’s so unfair about Medicare is that patients have to buy a drug plan, so they have to already pay for an extra plan to have access to drugs, and the plans vary because there are so many choices,” she said in an interview.
Elderly patients may be confused about the available options and may choose the Medicare Advantage plan with the lowest monthly premiums, which have the highest annual deductibles, usually in the $5000-and-up range, she said.
In addition, the Medicare Part D prescription coverage gap, commonly known as the “donut hole,” requires patients to pay a percentage of drug costs above a certain limit ($5030 in 2024) until a yearly out-of-pocket limit (currently $8000) is reached, after which the plan will again pick up most of the costs.
Although makers of inhalers have voluntarily agreed to limit monthly co-pays to $35 for uninsured patients, Medicare plans require insured patients to shell out considerably more, with 30 days of Trelegy Ellipta (fluticasone furoate, umeclidinium, and vilanterol) setting patients back nearly $350 per month, according to a recent search of costs for a United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plan.
Chasing Lower-Cost Options
“I have a lot of patients who use Canadian pharmacies to try to get around it, and I have a lot of patients who make a trip to Mexico every year and load up. I have patients who don’t take their inhalers as they are supposed to in order to make them last longer, and I have patients who take the inhalers of other family members,” Ms. Young said.
Humayun Anjum, MD, FCCP, from Dallas Pulmonary and Critical Care in Dallas, Texas, said in an interview that when patients claim that a prescribed drug isn’t working as expected for them, financial pressures may be partly to blame.
“When you investigate a little bit more, that’s where things become a bit more clear, and the patient may say ‘yeah, I stopped using this inhaler because it was costing me 200 bucks a month and I’m already on other medications,’ ” he said.
He noted that, when possible, he will steer patients toward discount prescription services such as GoodRx, which offers discounts at local pharmacies, or Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drugs, an online pharmacy that offers generic versions of Advair Diskus (fluticasone propionate/salmeterol) at a 100-50 mcg dose for $94.70, a savings of $307.30 over retail pharmacies, according to the company’s website.
Dr. Beach noted that Beth Israel Deaconess has a pharmacist embedded in the pulmonary clinic who can help eligible patients get financial assistance to pay for their medications.
“The influencing factors of CRN are multifaceted and necessitating more rigorous research. Health policy interventions focusing on reducing drug costs, delaying disease progression, preventing exacerbations, and reducing the risk of comorbidities may improve the economic burden of COPD and its outcomes,” Dr. Wen and colleagues wrote.
The study by Dr. Wen and colleagues was funded by grants from Chinese national and academic sources. Dr. McCormack has served as a consultant to Aridis, Boehringer Ingelheim, GlaxoSmithKline, MCG Diagnostics, ndd Medical Technologies, and UpToDate. Ms. Young, Dr. Anjum, and Dr. Beach reported no conflicts of interest.
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
Catch-and-Treat Strategy Identifies Undiagnosed Asthma and COPD
SAN DIEGO — You can’t treat patients if you can’t find them. But as investigators in a randomized controlled trial showed, a case-finding method based on spirometry results can identify individuals in the community with undiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma whose lives could be significantly improved with proper care.
“By diagnosing people early and treating them intensively, you can really improve their quality of life,” said lead investigator Shawn D. Aaron, MD, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Even those patients in the study who were randomly assigned to receive care from a general practice physician had improvements in lung function and quality of life, although on a smaller scale than patients assigned to a specialty team, Dr. Aaron said at the American Thoracic Society’s international conference.
He reported results of the study in a late-breaking oral abstract session. The study findings were also published online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Undiagnosed diseases
“The simple problem is that 70% of individuals with asthma or COPD are likely undiagnosed,” Dr. Aaron said.
He noted that the 2007-2012 US National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey found obstructive lung disease in 13% of randomly selected US adults, but 71% of these people had never been diagnosed with asthma or COPD.
“So our questions were in this study: One, can we find adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD in the community? The second question was: If we find them, are they sick? And the third and most important question was: Can we treat them early and improve their health outcomes?” he said.
Asthma and COPD both present with similar respiratory symptoms, including dyspnea, cough, wheeze, and/or chest tightness, and the two conditions share expiratory airflow obstruction as a common physiologic impairment that can be detected with spirometry.
Study details
To identify participants, the investigators hired a commercial survey firm to contact households asking whether any member aged 18 years or older had respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, wheezing, increased mucus or sputum production, or prolonged cough in the past 6 months. Those who responded yes were then contacted by a trial coordinator, and the symptomatic household member was asked to complete the Asthma Screening Questionnaire over the phone. Participants aged 60 years or older and those younger than 60 years with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen also completed the COPD Diagnostic Questionnaire.
Those with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen or 20 or higher on the COPD screen were invited to undergo spirometry at a trial site.
The investigators ultimately identified 508 adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD and randomly assigned them on an equal basis to an intervention group (253 patients) or control group (255 patients).
In the intervention group treatment was provided by a study pulmonologist and asthma-COPD educator who started guideline-based care. Patients were prescribed inhalers and were taught how to use them, and many were given action plans that included smoking cessation aids, exercise and weight counseling, and vaccinations against influenza and pneumonia.
Participants assigned to the control group would receive usual care provided by their primary care practitioner.
Improvements abound
During the 12 months of the study, 92% of patients in the intervention group and 60% in the control group were started on new medications for their condition.
Only 13.4% of those in the intervention group received either no respiratory treatments or a short-acting beta 2 agonist only during the entire trial period compared with 49.8% of controls, “so the usual care arm was undertreated relative to the intervention arm, and because of that under-treatment we saw a tremendous difference in the primary outcome,” Dr. Aaron said.
The primary outcome, the annualized rate of patient-initiated healthcare utilization for respiratory illness, was significantly lower in the intervention group, translating into an incidence rate ratio of 0.48 (P < .001).
Secondary outcomes were also better in the intervention group. For example, total scores on the St. George Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) declined by 10.2 points from baseline in intervention group compared with a 6.8-point drop in the usual-care group. The mean difference was 3.5 points (P = .009). Lower scores on the 0-100 SGRQ scale indicate better health status.
Similarly, total scores on the COPD Assessment Test, a scale of 0-40 with lower scores indicating better health, declined by 3.8 points and 2.6 points, respectively, over 12 months, for a mean difference of 1.3 points (P = .03).
In addition, those in the intervention arm had a 119-mL improvement in forced expiratory volume in 1 second over the 12 months of the study compared with only a 22-mL improvement in the usual-care group.
Translatable results?
Dr. Aaron acknowledged that the investigators could have chosen to keep those who were assigned to the control group unaware of their diagnosis during the study but because all patients enrolled were symptomatic, it would have been unethical to do so. All participants were informed of their diagnosis at randomization, and the information was conveyed to each patient’s primary care practitioner as well.
In fact, many patients in the control group decided to seek treatment for either asthma or COPD after learning of their diagnosis, which may have contributed to improved outcomes in the control arm, he said.
“What this means is if you make the diagnosis early in the community, and at least have them see a primary care practitioner, they will improve their quality of life and their health status,” he concluded.
Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School Of Medicine in Chicago, who co-moderated the session but was not involved in the study, said in an interview that the case-finding model used in the trial would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
“This idea of seeking out undiagnosed people by doing spirometry, so-called ‘case finding’ as they described it, testing highly symptomatic people with spirometry, is really challenging in the US, because symptoms are not collected proactively very much,” he said.
Persons with acute respiratory symptoms in the US typically seek healthcare at urgent-care clinics or have unscheduled visits with their primary care physicians, “and by all accounts those people should have spirometry, but they just don’t in the US, as best as I can tell,” he added.
He agreed that getting patients to a specialist can result in better outcomes but said that implementing a systematic approach such as the one described in the study would be extremely difficult in the fragmented US healthcare system.
Dr. Kalhan’s co-moderator, Nuala J. Meyer, MD, MS, from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told Chest Physician that “it was interesting that even those who were not in the intervention group but had these details passed on to their primary care physicians still had improvements,” and that it would be beneficial if primary care practitioners were routinely informed about the results of urgent care visits.
She added, however, that in the US the flow of information between urgent care clinics, primary care offices, and specialty clinics is problematic, suggesting that symptomatic patients may not always receive the additional care that they need.
The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Aaron, Dr. Kalhan, and Dr. Meyer all reported having no relevant disclosures.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
SAN DIEGO — You can’t treat patients if you can’t find them. But as investigators in a randomized controlled trial showed, a case-finding method based on spirometry results can identify individuals in the community with undiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma whose lives could be significantly improved with proper care.
“By diagnosing people early and treating them intensively, you can really improve their quality of life,” said lead investigator Shawn D. Aaron, MD, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Even those patients in the study who were randomly assigned to receive care from a general practice physician had improvements in lung function and quality of life, although on a smaller scale than patients assigned to a specialty team, Dr. Aaron said at the American Thoracic Society’s international conference.
He reported results of the study in a late-breaking oral abstract session. The study findings were also published online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Undiagnosed diseases
“The simple problem is that 70% of individuals with asthma or COPD are likely undiagnosed,” Dr. Aaron said.
He noted that the 2007-2012 US National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey found obstructive lung disease in 13% of randomly selected US adults, but 71% of these people had never been diagnosed with asthma or COPD.
“So our questions were in this study: One, can we find adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD in the community? The second question was: If we find them, are they sick? And the third and most important question was: Can we treat them early and improve their health outcomes?” he said.
Asthma and COPD both present with similar respiratory symptoms, including dyspnea, cough, wheeze, and/or chest tightness, and the two conditions share expiratory airflow obstruction as a common physiologic impairment that can be detected with spirometry.
Study details
To identify participants, the investigators hired a commercial survey firm to contact households asking whether any member aged 18 years or older had respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, wheezing, increased mucus or sputum production, or prolonged cough in the past 6 months. Those who responded yes were then contacted by a trial coordinator, and the symptomatic household member was asked to complete the Asthma Screening Questionnaire over the phone. Participants aged 60 years or older and those younger than 60 years with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen also completed the COPD Diagnostic Questionnaire.
Those with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen or 20 or higher on the COPD screen were invited to undergo spirometry at a trial site.
The investigators ultimately identified 508 adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD and randomly assigned them on an equal basis to an intervention group (253 patients) or control group (255 patients).
In the intervention group treatment was provided by a study pulmonologist and asthma-COPD educator who started guideline-based care. Patients were prescribed inhalers and were taught how to use them, and many were given action plans that included smoking cessation aids, exercise and weight counseling, and vaccinations against influenza and pneumonia.
Participants assigned to the control group would receive usual care provided by their primary care practitioner.
Improvements abound
During the 12 months of the study, 92% of patients in the intervention group and 60% in the control group were started on new medications for their condition.
Only 13.4% of those in the intervention group received either no respiratory treatments or a short-acting beta 2 agonist only during the entire trial period compared with 49.8% of controls, “so the usual care arm was undertreated relative to the intervention arm, and because of that under-treatment we saw a tremendous difference in the primary outcome,” Dr. Aaron said.
The primary outcome, the annualized rate of patient-initiated healthcare utilization for respiratory illness, was significantly lower in the intervention group, translating into an incidence rate ratio of 0.48 (P < .001).
Secondary outcomes were also better in the intervention group. For example, total scores on the St. George Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) declined by 10.2 points from baseline in intervention group compared with a 6.8-point drop in the usual-care group. The mean difference was 3.5 points (P = .009). Lower scores on the 0-100 SGRQ scale indicate better health status.
Similarly, total scores on the COPD Assessment Test, a scale of 0-40 with lower scores indicating better health, declined by 3.8 points and 2.6 points, respectively, over 12 months, for a mean difference of 1.3 points (P = .03).
In addition, those in the intervention arm had a 119-mL improvement in forced expiratory volume in 1 second over the 12 months of the study compared with only a 22-mL improvement in the usual-care group.
Translatable results?
Dr. Aaron acknowledged that the investigators could have chosen to keep those who were assigned to the control group unaware of their diagnosis during the study but because all patients enrolled were symptomatic, it would have been unethical to do so. All participants were informed of their diagnosis at randomization, and the information was conveyed to each patient’s primary care practitioner as well.
In fact, many patients in the control group decided to seek treatment for either asthma or COPD after learning of their diagnosis, which may have contributed to improved outcomes in the control arm, he said.
“What this means is if you make the diagnosis early in the community, and at least have them see a primary care practitioner, they will improve their quality of life and their health status,” he concluded.
Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School Of Medicine in Chicago, who co-moderated the session but was not involved in the study, said in an interview that the case-finding model used in the trial would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
“This idea of seeking out undiagnosed people by doing spirometry, so-called ‘case finding’ as they described it, testing highly symptomatic people with spirometry, is really challenging in the US, because symptoms are not collected proactively very much,” he said.
Persons with acute respiratory symptoms in the US typically seek healthcare at urgent-care clinics or have unscheduled visits with their primary care physicians, “and by all accounts those people should have spirometry, but they just don’t in the US, as best as I can tell,” he added.
He agreed that getting patients to a specialist can result in better outcomes but said that implementing a systematic approach such as the one described in the study would be extremely difficult in the fragmented US healthcare system.
Dr. Kalhan’s co-moderator, Nuala J. Meyer, MD, MS, from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told Chest Physician that “it was interesting that even those who were not in the intervention group but had these details passed on to their primary care physicians still had improvements,” and that it would be beneficial if primary care practitioners were routinely informed about the results of urgent care visits.
She added, however, that in the US the flow of information between urgent care clinics, primary care offices, and specialty clinics is problematic, suggesting that symptomatic patients may not always receive the additional care that they need.
The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Aaron, Dr. Kalhan, and Dr. Meyer all reported having no relevant disclosures.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.
SAN DIEGO — You can’t treat patients if you can’t find them. But as investigators in a randomized controlled trial showed, a case-finding method based on spirometry results can identify individuals in the community with undiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or asthma whose lives could be significantly improved with proper care.
“By diagnosing people early and treating them intensively, you can really improve their quality of life,” said lead investigator Shawn D. Aaron, MD, from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Even those patients in the study who were randomly assigned to receive care from a general practice physician had improvements in lung function and quality of life, although on a smaller scale than patients assigned to a specialty team, Dr. Aaron said at the American Thoracic Society’s international conference.
He reported results of the study in a late-breaking oral abstract session. The study findings were also published online in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Undiagnosed diseases
“The simple problem is that 70% of individuals with asthma or COPD are likely undiagnosed,” Dr. Aaron said.
He noted that the 2007-2012 US National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey found obstructive lung disease in 13% of randomly selected US adults, but 71% of these people had never been diagnosed with asthma or COPD.
“So our questions were in this study: One, can we find adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD in the community? The second question was: If we find them, are they sick? And the third and most important question was: Can we treat them early and improve their health outcomes?” he said.
Asthma and COPD both present with similar respiratory symptoms, including dyspnea, cough, wheeze, and/or chest tightness, and the two conditions share expiratory airflow obstruction as a common physiologic impairment that can be detected with spirometry.
Study details
To identify participants, the investigators hired a commercial survey firm to contact households asking whether any member aged 18 years or older had respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath, wheezing, increased mucus or sputum production, or prolonged cough in the past 6 months. Those who responded yes were then contacted by a trial coordinator, and the symptomatic household member was asked to complete the Asthma Screening Questionnaire over the phone. Participants aged 60 years or older and those younger than 60 years with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen also completed the COPD Diagnostic Questionnaire.
Those with a score of 6 or higher on the asthma screen or 20 or higher on the COPD screen were invited to undergo spirometry at a trial site.
The investigators ultimately identified 508 adults with undiagnosed asthma or COPD and randomly assigned them on an equal basis to an intervention group (253 patients) or control group (255 patients).
In the intervention group treatment was provided by a study pulmonologist and asthma-COPD educator who started guideline-based care. Patients were prescribed inhalers and were taught how to use them, and many were given action plans that included smoking cessation aids, exercise and weight counseling, and vaccinations against influenza and pneumonia.
Participants assigned to the control group would receive usual care provided by their primary care practitioner.
Improvements abound
During the 12 months of the study, 92% of patients in the intervention group and 60% in the control group were started on new medications for their condition.
Only 13.4% of those in the intervention group received either no respiratory treatments or a short-acting beta 2 agonist only during the entire trial period compared with 49.8% of controls, “so the usual care arm was undertreated relative to the intervention arm, and because of that under-treatment we saw a tremendous difference in the primary outcome,” Dr. Aaron said.
The primary outcome, the annualized rate of patient-initiated healthcare utilization for respiratory illness, was significantly lower in the intervention group, translating into an incidence rate ratio of 0.48 (P < .001).
Secondary outcomes were also better in the intervention group. For example, total scores on the St. George Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) declined by 10.2 points from baseline in intervention group compared with a 6.8-point drop in the usual-care group. The mean difference was 3.5 points (P = .009). Lower scores on the 0-100 SGRQ scale indicate better health status.
Similarly, total scores on the COPD Assessment Test, a scale of 0-40 with lower scores indicating better health, declined by 3.8 points and 2.6 points, respectively, over 12 months, for a mean difference of 1.3 points (P = .03).
In addition, those in the intervention arm had a 119-mL improvement in forced expiratory volume in 1 second over the 12 months of the study compared with only a 22-mL improvement in the usual-care group.
Translatable results?
Dr. Aaron acknowledged that the investigators could have chosen to keep those who were assigned to the control group unaware of their diagnosis during the study but because all patients enrolled were symptomatic, it would have been unethical to do so. All participants were informed of their diagnosis at randomization, and the information was conveyed to each patient’s primary care practitioner as well.
In fact, many patients in the control group decided to seek treatment for either asthma or COPD after learning of their diagnosis, which may have contributed to improved outcomes in the control arm, he said.
“What this means is if you make the diagnosis early in the community, and at least have them see a primary care practitioner, they will improve their quality of life and their health status,” he concluded.
Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, from the Northwestern University Feinberg School Of Medicine in Chicago, who co-moderated the session but was not involved in the study, said in an interview that the case-finding model used in the trial would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.
“This idea of seeking out undiagnosed people by doing spirometry, so-called ‘case finding’ as they described it, testing highly symptomatic people with spirometry, is really challenging in the US, because symptoms are not collected proactively very much,” he said.
Persons with acute respiratory symptoms in the US typically seek healthcare at urgent-care clinics or have unscheduled visits with their primary care physicians, “and by all accounts those people should have spirometry, but they just don’t in the US, as best as I can tell,” he added.
He agreed that getting patients to a specialist can result in better outcomes but said that implementing a systematic approach such as the one described in the study would be extremely difficult in the fragmented US healthcare system.
Dr. Kalhan’s co-moderator, Nuala J. Meyer, MD, MS, from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, told Chest Physician that “it was interesting that even those who were not in the intervention group but had these details passed on to their primary care physicians still had improvements,” and that it would be beneficial if primary care practitioners were routinely informed about the results of urgent care visits.
She added, however, that in the US the flow of information between urgent care clinics, primary care offices, and specialty clinics is problematic, suggesting that symptomatic patients may not always receive the additional care that they need.
The study was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Dr. Aaron, Dr. Kalhan, and Dr. Meyer all reported having no relevant disclosures.
A version of this article appeared on Medscape.com.