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Introduction: Patients with severe allergic asthma (SAA) are at risk of severe exacerbations. Omalizumab is recommended as an add-on treatment for patients with uncontrolled SAA, despite high-dose inhaled corticosteroids and long acting ß2-agonist combination therapy (standard therapy).RELIEF was a prospective, open label, multicenter study conducted to assess the real-life effectiveness of omalizumab co-administered with standard therapy in patients with SAA for 24 months. Methods: A total of 347 patients aged ≥ 6 years with SAA were enrolled, 285 of whom (8 pediatrics and 277 adolescents and adults) completed this 24-month study. Compared with the 12 months prior to baseline, the mean number of exacerbations was reduced in the overall population at any time interval during the study. Proportion of patients with no exacerbations increased to 77.7% at 24 months from 32.6% at 12 months prior to baseline. A reduction in healthcare resource utilization was also observed. The mean number of specialist visits reduced from baseline (5.8 visits) to 2.4 visits at Month 24. Results: The mean asthma control test score was >19 at every time-point during the study. The rate of Global Evaluation of Treatment Effectiveness (GETE) for asthma response significantly increased at Months 18 and 24 (P <0.05) compared to baseline. Pulmonary function remained relatively stable for the overall study population. There were no new or unexpected safety findings in the study. Conclusion: RELIEF study showed that add-on therapy with omalizumab is effective in reducing exacerbations, healthcare utilization, and improving GETE score in patients with SAA uncontrolled by standard therapy.
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BACKGROUND: In order to determine the impact of allergic rhinitis on the quality of life of the patients, standardized and validated questionnaires have been developed. The quality of life is the perception of the patient of the functional effects of his illness and its therapeutics consequences. OBJECTIVE: To determine the modification of index the quality of life on the patients with allergic rhinitis attended at the external consultation of the service of allergy and clinical immunology of the Hospital Universitario de Puebla when they were submitted to integral allergologic treatment. PATIENTS AND METHODS: It was carried out a longitudinal, prospective, experimental and prolective study in patients of both sexes, older than 18 years with diagnosis of allergic rhinitis, a validated and standardized questionnaire was applied to assess the quality of life index every 14 days during 6 months. It was measured severity degree at the beginning and the end of the study. It was assessed the sample size considering a reasonable size of the effect 1 and a variability of 0.8 for usual techniques. The severity degree was compared with RIDIT analysis and the mean with variance, a value of p smaller than 0.05 was considered significant. RESULTS: Sixteen patients were included, 75% were women. The average age was 34.2 years old. When the severity degrees were compared it was an average RIDIT of 0.014 with a "z" of -5.0 that implicated a value of p < 0.001. The comparison among the initial quality of life and the subsequently visits mean was significantly different since third visit. CONCLUSION: The integral allergologic treatment modifies the quality of life and the severity degree in the patients with allergic rhinitis.