Allergy, Asthma & Clinical Immunology 2017, 13:45 | Published on: 3 November 2017
I. J. Pouliquen, P. Howarth, D. Austin, G. Gunn, E. Meyer, R. G. Price and E. Bradford
To the Editor,
We read with interest the case report and accompanying discussion published by Mukherjee et al. (AACI 2017;13:2) of a 62-year old woman diagnosed with severe eosinophilic asthma. This clinical case presents a patient with progressive deterioration in FEV1 function since 2011 with no improvement observed while receiving OCS, hydroxyurea or imatinib therapy. On this background of deterioration, the patient entered the double-blind placebo controlled clinical trial MEA115575 and received mepolizumab 100 mg s.c. every 4 weeks. Further deterioration in FEV1 coincided with the (protocol defined) reduction in prednisolone during the study, and neither intravenous solumedrol nor pre-study prednisolone doses improved FEV1 to pre-study values. During the open-label mepolizumab extension study MEA115661 the patient’s clinical status was unchanged. In January 2015, 9 months after their last dose of mepolizumab, the patient further deteriorated whilst receiving azathioprine immunosuppressive therapy. This clinical case presentation clearly underlines the aggressive nature…