RESEARCH ARTICLE
Efficacy and Safety of Biologic Agents in Chronic Urticaria, Asthma and Atopic Dermatitis – A Real-life Experience
Mohamed Abuzakouk1, *, Omar K.H.A. Ghorab1, Ali S. Wahla1, Zaid Zoumot1, Mohsen Nasir1, Deepa Grandon1, Mateen H. Uzbeck1, Fulvio Salvo1, Irfan Shafiq1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2020Volume: 14
First Page: 99
Last Page: 106
Publisher ID: TORMJ-14-99
DOI: 10.2174/1874306402014010099
Article History:
Received Date: 09/07/2020Revision Received Date: 10/10/2020
Acceptance Date: 01/11/2020
Electronic publication date: 31/12/2020
Collection year: 2020
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
Several biologic agents have been approved for the treatment of asthma, chronic urticaria and atopic dermatitis. These therapeutic agents are especially useful for patients with severe or refractory symptoms. We present the real-life experience of four of the commonly used biologic agents in the United Arab Emirates.
Methods:
In this retrospective observational study, we reviewed the demographic, clinical, laboratory and treatment parameters for all patients treated with biologic agents.
Results:
270 patients received biologics at our centre between May 2015 and December 2019 with a median age of 36.5 years. Omalizumab was the most prescribed agent (n=183, 67.8%) followed by dupilumab (n=54, 20%), benralizumab (n=22, 8.1%) and mepolizumab (n=11, 4.1%). Urticaria was the commonest treatment indication (n=148, 55%) followed by asthma (n=105, 39%) and atopic dermatitis (n=13, 5%). All chronic urticaria patients were treated with omalizumab and showed improvement in the mean urticaria control test score from 6.7±4.47 to 12.02±4.17, with a p-value of 0.001. Dupilumab was found to be the most commonly prescribed drug for asthma (37%), followed by omalizumab (32%), benralizumab (21%) and mepolizumab (10%). The mean Asthma control test score for all asthmatics combined increased from 17.06 ± 5.4 to 19.44 ± 5.6, with p-value 0.0012 with treatment; FeNO reduced from 60.02 ± 45.74 to 29.11 ± 27.92, with p-value 0.001 and mean FEV1 improved from 2.38L ± 0.8 to 2.67L ± 0.78, with p-value 0.045. Only 4 patients in the entire cohort reported adverse events.
Conclusion:
Our study demonstrated that biological agents are a safe and effective treatment for atopic asthma, chronic urticaria and atopic dermatitis.
