A promising new monoclonal antibody treatment has been shown to reduce the symptoms of the most severe asthma sufferers by as much as 92%. In fact, the new experimental treatment called benralizumab led to 60% of trial participants no longer having to use a steroid inhaler.
The rate of children with severe asthma has skyrocketed ever since the 1980s, when the childhood vaccine schedule was dramatically increased. About 5% of people with asthma suffer from the most severe form of the illness, which causes chest tightness, coughing, and panic attacks as they struggle to get enough air. They also have to make frequent trips to the hospital.
The most serious patients have to take high doses of steroids via an inhaler, which works to calm the production of mucus in the lungs. The problem with that is that higher doses of steroids can lead to diabetes, bone fractures, cataracts, suppression of the adrenal system, and other serious problems.
Benralizumab, which is made by AstraZeneca, just went through a phase four clinical trial with 200 participants in Europe. 60% of participants no longer needed to use a steroid inhaler at all, and 92% were able to safely reduce their use of steroids. More than half of the trial participants were in clinical remission—meaning they no longer had asthma—after 48 weeks of treatment.
The treatment was only used on patients with severe eosinophilic asthma. The 8% of participants who didn’t respond well to the treatment still had to use high-dose steroids to try to control the attacks.
This is potentially great news for severe asthma sufferers within the next few years. The question now, of course, is whether people will still trust the pharmaceutical companies enough to try newer treatments like this after the way they destroyed the public trust during the COVID-19 vaccine debacle.
