Precision Therapy Effective for Some COPD Patients

October 18th, 2017

A subset of people with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)–a progressive, debilitating lung disease affecting 30 million Americans–may be helped by a treatment called mepolizumab, according to results published in the New England Journal of Medicine. In two separate studies, researchers found that for the 40% of patients with a specific type of the disease called “eosinophilic predominant” COPD who were not finding symptom relief from standard treatments, mepolizumab reduced the number of eosinophils in the blood and reduced the rate of symptom flare ups by nearly 20%. Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell that play a key role in inflammation and are associated with an increased risk for sudden, worsening episodes of COPD symptoms like shortness of breath, cough, and excess mucus. The research suggests that eosinophilic airway inflammation contributes to COPD flare ups in certain patients, and helps to explain why some people with COPD continue to have these episodes despite receiving standard therapy. “The goal of precision medicine is to give the right treatment to the right patient,” said lead author and University of Pittsburgh researcher Frank Sciurba, MD, FCCP. “These findings are the first example of a precision therapy that is uniquely effective in a subgroup of patients with treatment-resistant COPD.”

Learn more about precision medicine at pittplusme.org.