Omalizumab (Xolair®) improves quality of life in adult patients with allergic asthma:: a review

Physicians are increasingly aware that asthma causes significant impairment of the patient's physical, psychological, and social well-being. Whilst standard clinical endpoints provide significant information on airway status during treatment, it is important to determine whether such improvements overcome the functional impairment that patients have to deal with on a daily basis. As such, assessment of health-related quality of life (QoL) is an important aspect of asthma management in clinical practice. Omalizumab (Xolair(R)) is a recombinant humanized monoclonal anti-immunoglobulin E (IgE) antibody that represents a new therapeutic approach to IgE-mediated diseases such as allergic asthma. Clinical studies show that omalizumab improves the control of allergic asthma whilst reducing steroid consumption, and enhances long-term disease control in patients with recurrent symptoms. Using established and validated QoL methodology two placebo-controlled clinical studies in adults with moderate-to-severe allergic asthma have shown that patients treated with omalizumab experience a clinically relevant improvement in all aspects of their asthma-related QoL, changes that were significantly superior to those observed for placebo. Such improvements were apparent when omalizumab was added to existing therapy with inhaled corticosteroids, and maintained during a subsequent steroid-reduction phase. Through effective disease control, omalizumab therefore leads to significant improvements in health-related QoL that are meaningful to patients with allergic asthma. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.