Injectables for asthma

Injectable asthma medications can be effective for patients who have severe persistent asthma and have been unable to find relief through other treatments. Learn more about the benefits of injectable therapy from Keren Bakal, MD.

Transcript

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Injectables, they all work differently. But they basically influence the pathway of the inflammatory response that occurs in asthma.

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We offer injectables for patients who have severe persistent asthma, who are pretty much maxed out on therapy

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and are still really uncontrolled. So one class of medication that's available works on immunoglobulin IgE, which is often

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implicated in the inflammatory response that occurs when you're exposed to an allergen, and it can cause,

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you know an asthmatic response. So in somebody who has a high level of IgE in their blood

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and has a lot of allergies and severe asthma, they could be a candidate for this treatment, which is given every few weeks.

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All of the injectables can have a side effect of a hypersensitivity reaction, or an allergic reaction, or a local skin reaction to getting the injectable.

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If a person, before going on injectable therapy, was taking maximal therapy, so they were on their inhaler, they were taking it consistently every day,

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and they're still having daily symptoms of asthma where they're needing to take their rescue inhaler, or they're oftentimes requiring prednisone--

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what we want to see in terms of improvement is that we can actually control their symptoms so they're not requiring the rescue inhaler as often,

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we can get them off the oral steroid if they're on it, and generally just feeling better in terms of less shortness of breath and wheezing.