Biologicals for severe asthma: what we can learn from real-life experiences?

Severe asthma is a serious disease affecting about 5-10% of asthmatic patients. Often patients with this kind of asthma requires periodical courses or daily intake of oral corticosteroids, to control symptoms. In the last few years several biological drugs have been developed with the aim to decrease exacerbations and reduce or suspend intake of systemic steroids in severe asthmatic patients. Clinical trials demonstrated the efficacy and the safety of biological antibodies in asthma, but it is already known that randomized controlled trials alone are not sufficient to provide complete information on a drug.

After marketing of monoclonal antibodies has been developed several real-life studies with the aim to observe how drugs, tested only on trial patients, are able to provide adequate effectiveness even on 'real' patients; indeed, it is well known that the latter differ in some characteristics from the patients of the trials.

The results of this analysis confirm the good efficacy of the biologics similarly in real-life patients, also ensuring a promising safety even in periods of observation longer than those of the randomized controlled trials.