(beraking latest news) – “The approval of anifrolumab represents a great step forward for the treatment of adult patients with active systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), a multifaceted, complex, highly debilitating and disabling disease that significantly impacts their quality of life. Not only that, LES affects women of childbearing age 9 times out of 10, so it is a disease that also has an extremely significant social impact. After more than 10 years, anifrolumab is the only drug that to date has concluded the clinical development program in this pathology, for which it is very complex to conduct randomized clinical trials. Patients with moderate to severe lupus will now be able to benefit from a treatment capable of reducing disease activity, guaranteeing rapid action and savings in the use of cortisone”. This was stated by Raffaela Fede, medical director of AstraZeneca Italia during the press conference “Systemic lupus erythematosus, the new treatment opportunities”, promoted today in Rome on the occasion of World Lupus Day to take stock of the important therapeutic innovations currently available to control the illness.
“Today is a very important day that helps us remember an extremely disabling and multifaceted pathology, such as systemic lupus erythematosus – underlines Fede -. We are proud to bring a therapeutic breakthrough to SLE patients, a drug that antagonizes interferon 1 and is effective as well as safe and fast-acting, as demonstrated by three major clinical studies: two Phase III Tulip studies ( 1 and 2) and the Phase II study Muse. From the results that emerged, anifrolumab demonstrates its efficacy above all in the cutaneous and articular fields which are among the districts most involved at the onset of SLE, although other recent data also confirm an efficacy profile in the hematological field, also affected by the disease ” . Not only that, “anifrolumab in more than 50% of SLE patients allows a lasting reduction in the use of oral corticosteroids that contribute to organ damage in these patients and, consequently, worsen the disease prognosis”.
As “AstraZeneca we are engaged in various therapeutic areas, in particular the respiratory area and the immunological area, for which we have over 30 studies and 14 molecules in development” he concludes.