AirFluSal Forspiro showed superiority at 12 months over Seretide Diskus in persistence to treatment

New study shows that rate of patient persistence using Sandoz AirFluSal Forspiro is twice as high as for reference product Seretide Diskus.

Persistence to treatment is defined as the duration of time from initiation to discontinuation of treatment. Dr Bruce Bender, the lead author on the paper, said: "COPD and asthma are long-term diseases requiring long-term, persistent adherence to therapy. While adherence has been widely studied to date, a growing awareness of the large number of patients who abandon their asthma treatment suggests that persistence to treatment may be more relevant for longer-term outcomes."

Poor persistence to treatment rates are likely to result in poor outcomes including disease exacerbations, reduced quality of life, hospitalization, increased mortality, increased burden on the healthcare system and high economic costs. Relatively few studies have investigated persistence in patients taking inhaled therapies, but those that have report sub-optimal rates in these patients.

The results are reported in the latest edition of Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. The comparative analysis study is the largest European Real-World Evidence (RWE) study ever conducted in asthma and COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease).

The study, entitled "Comparative analysis of persistence to treatment among patients with asthma or COPD receiving AirFluSal Forspiro or Seretide Diskus salmeterol/fluticasone propionate combination therapy", concluded that patients using the Sandoz device showed a persistence rate of 22.9%, compared to 10.5% for those using the reference product device.

"These results fully validate our decision at Sandoz to develop our inhaler device in close collaboration with patients, incorporating their feedback," said Dr Spencer Jones, Sandoz Head of Global Medical Affairs, Respiratory. "This approach, which results in the device being effectively designed to give direct feedback to users, is the key to success in treating chronic conditions."

He added: "What the data also highlight is the need for even more research to better understand patient persistence behaviors and to develop strategies to address what are still unacceptably low overall levels."

The study was designed to retrospectively analyse persistence rates between the two devices, using dispensing data from a large German pharmacy database. While retrospective database analyses have some limitations, the strengths of this data include the fact that 11,744 patients were included in a matched pair analysis, controlled for gender, age and month of treatment initiation (to limit seasonal effects).

All patients were first time users of salmeterol/fluticasone propionate and persistence to treat was analyzed for a 12 month period.