Determining the Effectiveness of Treatment of Severe Allergic Asthma with Biomarkers

For individuals with allergic asthma, pretreatment blood eosinophil counts and total serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels are effective predictors for clinicians who are considering omalizumab treatment for their patients, according to a recent study.

The researchers sought to determine which pretreatment baseline characteristics predict treatment response among patients with severe allergic asthma using omalizumab for treatment.

Electronic bases were used to find eligible studies for the researchers’ meta-analysis. The studies reported the potential biomarkers that may predict the responsiveness and efficacy of omalizumab. In the studies, patients who received omalizumab treatment were stratified into responders or non-responders.

In total, 41 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Compared with non-responding patients, results pooled together showed that omalizumab responders had significantly younger age in the adult subgroup, higher pretreatment total serum IgE levels, and percent predicted FEV1 and FeNO.

Further, the researchers confirmed through their analysis that, when selecting patients to undergo treatment with omalizumab, higher eosinophil counts and total serum IgE levels are useful biomarkers.

—Jessica Ganga

Reference:

Li Y, Li X, Zhang B, Yu Q, Lu Y. Predictive biomarkers for response to omalizumab in patients with severe allergic asthma: a meta-analysis. Expert Rev Respir Med. 2022;16(19):1023-1033. doi:10.1080/17476348.2022.2092100