NICE says yes to asthma treatment Xolair
pharmafile | September 6, 2007 | News story | Sales and Marketing | Xolair
Xolair, a drug which helps control the most severe cases of allergic asthma, has been approved for use on the NHS.
While asthma is a controllable illness for millions of people in the UK, as many as 1,400 people die every year after suffering severe attacks, and around half of all cases are caused by severe allergic reactions.
Xolair is the first drug to stabilise severe allergic asthma in many patients by tackling its root cause, the overactive immune response to allergens such as pollen, cat dander and house-dust mite droppings.
Dr Robert Niven, Respiratory Consultant, commented: "Xolair offers hope for patients with severe, persistent allergic asthma. In this small, but important, group with poorly controlled disease, it is clinically proven to significantly reduce asthma deteriorations and significantly improve quality of life."
He added: "Before Xolair was available, clinicians were very limited in what they could do to control symptoms in these patients, other than prescribe high doses of conventional medications including oral steroids."
Xolair was developed by Novartis in collaboration with biotech companies Genentech and Tanox and launched in the UK in 2005.
Annual cost for the drug for an average patient is around £12,000.
The drug's high cost means that NICE has imposed strict criteria for its use, recommending that patients must be diagnosed with severe, persistent allergic asthma and have severe, unstable disease. Furthermore, patients must also have experienced either two or more severe exacerbations of asthma requiring hospital admission within the previous year, or three or more severe exacerbations of asthma within the previous year, at least one of which required admission to hospital, and a further two which required treatment or monitoring in excess of the patient's usual regimen, in an accident and emergency unit.
NICE has also stipulated that each patient must also have had a full trial of and documented compliance with standard treatment. If relevant, patients must also stop smoking.
Subhanu Saxena, chief executive Novartis UK, said: "We welcome the NICE recommendation to make Xolair available to patients with such severe asthma. As a result of today's decision, we hope that more patients will have access to Xolair to alleviate their asthma symptoms and experience a better quality of life."
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