More than 200,000 Italians suffer from it: it is severe asthma and many patients are ‘resistant’ to the standard therapies. For example, many patients have been treated with oral cortisone for long periods but have not had significant results from the point of view of symptoms.
Thanks to the research, however, they will benefit from a new therapeutic solution: benralizumab, a monoclonal antibody that has given significant improvements in the quality of life of patients.
Professor Giorgio Walter Canonica, director of the Centre for Personalized Medicine Asthma and Allergies in Humanitas, spoke about it.
New therapy for severe asthma
“Unlike cortisone, which has a general effect on the body and is therefore not targeted, this therapy selectively acts on the mechanism that determines eosinophilic inflammation with excellent patient tolerability.
This new therapy is not useful for the ’emergency’ treatment in case of an asthma attack and to reduce the ‘hunger for air’, the unpleasant feeling of not breathing that asthmatics feel, but is to be used as a maintenance therapy and should therefore be prolonged in agreement with the doctor.
Treatment with benralizumab is reserved for adult patients suffering from severe refractory eosinophilic asthma according to certain conditions and parameters.
The treatment with this new therapy, which for the eligible patients is borne by the National Health System, is administered in the specialist hospital and university centers subcutaneously, once every four weeks, for the first three doses, and once every eight weeks for the next.
