Choice of treatment for chronic obstructive lung disease affects risk of pneumonia
Bildtext
The choice of medicine when treating chronic obstructive lung disease can affect the occurrence of pneumonia in patients. This is shown in a new study published today by British Medical Journal, BMJ.
Chronic obstructive lung disease (COLD or COPD) is about to become one of the world’s most serious threats to human health. The number of COLD-related deaths is expected to increase by more than 30 per cent over the next ten years and the disease is predicted to be the third most common cause of death by 2020.
The current study is part of a larger COLD study, PATHOS, which is a cooperation between Uppsala University, Karolinska institutet and AstraZeneca where the researchers have used clinical data to compare two different medical treatments used against the disease. The two treatments each combine two types of drugs: inhaled steroids and beta 2 agonists. The first study comparing the COLD treatments was published in Journal of Internal Medicine in March. The second study has now been published, comparing risks of COLD-related pneumonia.
The results show that the risk of catching pneumonia was 73 per cent higher for patients treated with fluticasone/salmeterol compared to those treated with budesonide/formoterol. The pneumonia related death rate was also higher, as was the number of hospital stays.
“The study shows that it matters which of these treatments is used. The risk of pneumonia is lower for patients using budesonide”, says Christer Jansson, Professor at Uppsala University and Senior Physician at the Allergy and Lung Clinic at Uppsala University Hospital.
The PATHOS study is the largest and longest observational study comparing the efficiency and safety of two common combinatorial treatments prescribed to COLD patients. Data from 21,361 patient journals was combined with information from national healthcare registries, hospital, drug and cause of death registries, for the years 1999–2009.
Reference: Pneumonia and pneumonia related mortality in patients with COPD treated with fixed combinations of inhaled corticosteroid and long acting β2 agonist: observational matched cohort study (PATHOS). BMJ 2013; 346 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f3306
Anneli Waara