New long-term data collected from almost 6,000 patients in 37 countries has confirmed the inhaler medication Spiriva and a similar drug, Atrovent, decreases the risk of death in COPD patients by 16 per cent over other drug combinations.
Researcher Donald P. Tashkin, from University of California, Los Angeles also found that the drug combo bettered quality of life, and cut the number of disease exacerbations.
The findings, released at a medical conference in Berlin, should answer the concerns about the treatment in the face of controversial findings that it could increase the risk of heart attacks. A previous study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, suggested that people on this class of drug, called inhaled anti-cholinergics, had a 58 per cent increased risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack or stroke.
COPD is a respiratory illness that's the fourth largest killer in the United States. Spiriva is an inhaled anticholinergic drug, which keep the muscles around the large airways from tightening. The new study was funded by Spiriva makers Boehringer Ingelheim and Pfizer and appears in the Oct. 9 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.
