The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Wednesday the approval of the drug for severe asthma treatment called Cinqair. The medication developed by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is focused on treating asthma in adults who suffer from frequent attacks despite following their doctors’ recommendations.

Under the FDA approval, patients can now prevent themselves from having asthma attacks as patients with 18 years old or older can take the medicine for asthma for maintenance. The medicine for asthma Cinqair can also be used alongside another medicine with similar components, researchers said on the press release.

Photo credit: Murrays Pharmacy
The FDA announced on Wednesday the approval of the drug for severe asthma treatment called Cinqair. Photo credit: Murrays Pharmacy

Even though the current care standards’ are high, patients follow their ongoing treatment, patients suffering from severe asthma remain inadequately controlled, according to lead investigator of the study Professor Mario Castro from the Washington University School of Medicine. He added that this, in turn, could result in implications leading to increased exacerbations and hospitalization as reported in the journal Business Wire.

The study was based on a safety test of the Cinqair drug from the FDA, as it conducted a controlled, double-blind test. In order to test its safety and efficacy, four randomized placebo test were performed in those individuals showing severe asthma diagnoses and were currently in ongoing treatment.

Basically, the volunteers for the test were given the drug developed by Teva Pharmaceutical Industries or a placebo every four weeks as a complement to asthma treatment, said the report from Teva. Researchers then analyzed the test results and were surprised to encounter that the group receiving Cinqair presented fewer attacks of asthma.

Cinqair shows promising results

In addition, those patients also showed a longer period of time between asthma attacks in comparison to those patients in the placebo group. Medical experts now assure that Cinqair exhibited improvements compared to the current asthma treatment drugs that could be noticed in the patients’ lung function.

According to the report in the journal Business Wire, Cinqair is able to lessen the number of asthma attacks by decreasing the volume of blood eosinophils, which is a type of white blood cell capable of preventing asthma attacks from occurring. The development of improved drugs in order to solve the current medications’ bugs plays a significant role in human’s health.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that over 22 million American people suffer from asthma on a report made 3 years ago, and also estimates that more than 400,000 hospitalizations due to asthma attacks are performed each year.

Source: BusinessWire