Best Poster Award to Dr. Wand at the Pneumo Update Congress

Best Poster Award to Dr. Wand at the Pneumo Update Congress

Dr. Wand, head of the pulmonary institute at the Barzilai medical center was awarded the prize of the best poster on "clinical remission of severe asthma on biological therapies: Comparison of different criteria sets. 

The annual Pneumo Update Europe 2024 was held between 14-15th of June 2024 in Prague, Czech Republic. During the convention, Dr. Wand, the head of the pulmonary institute at the Barzilai University Medical Center, presented the poster "Clinical remission of severe asthma on biological therapies: Comparison of different criteria sets".

During the last years, there has been a revolution in the treatment of severe asthma in light of the development of biological drugs targeting specific inflammatory processes, which are the root of the disease. These effective treatments led to the thought that it is possible to bring some of the most severely ill patients into a state of remission. It is agreed that such a remission should be defined according to several principles: a patient who doesn't need systemic steroids (pills or injections); doesn't suffer from flare-ups over a long period; whose symptoms are under control and whose lung functions are "good". However, there are disagreements on exactly how to define the state of remission under treatment because of different criteria in different professional associations of different countries.

The objective of this study was to compare different criteria for remission in adults receiving biological regimen for severe asthma for at least 6 months.

We compared the proportion of subjects who fulfilled different specific criteria in the four domains, as well as

those who achieved different composite outcome measures of clinical remission.

The current biological treatments included mepolizumab, dupilumab, benralizumab, omalizumab and reslizumab.

Overall remission was 20-41%, depending on the definition, with significant variability in agreement between different sets of remission criteria.

Our conclusion was that clinical remission is achievable in real-world severe asthmatics on biological therapies but the core criteria for remission should be better defined.  

Attached: the full presentation