Severe asthma is a dangerous condition that affects 5–10% of asthmatic people. To treat symptoms, patients with this type of asthma often need to take oral corticosteroids on a regular basis or on a daily basis. Several biological medicines have been developed in recent years with the goal of reducing exacerbations and suspending or reducing the need of systemic steroids in severe asthmatic patients. Clinical trials have shown that biological antibodies are effective and safe in the treatment of asthma, although it is well known that randomised controlled trials alone are insufficient to provide complete information about a medicine.
Following the commercialization of monoclonal antibodies, a number of real-world studies have been conducted to see if medications that have only been evaluated on trial patients may still give acceptable efficacy in ‘real’ patients; it is generally recognised that these patients differ in various ways from the trial patients.
The findings of this study support the biologics’ good performance in real-world patients, while also indicating promising safety even after longer durations of observation than in randomised controlled studies.
