Benralizumab as effective as mepolizumab for inducing remission in patients with eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis: NEJM

“By showing that benralizumab has comparable results to mepolizumab in the safe treatment of EGPA, we have added another potential option in the arsenal to help patients of this rare disease,” said Dr. Wechsler. “While both drugs showed similar disease remission, relapse and safety impacts, we observed benralizumab did a better job in reducing the need of oral glucocorticoids and lower blood eosinophil counts. This was achieved using fewer injections of benralizumab, which also could be a benefit to the patient.”

The study randomized 140 patients who received either one 30 mg injection of benralizumab or three 100 mg injections of mepolizumab every four weeks for 52 weeks. The primary analysis was to evaluate the non-inferiority of benralizumab versus mepolizumab. The results suggest that targeting eosinophils as a therapeutic strategy in EGPA can lead to a higher number of patients achieving remission, and a lower number experiencing relapse. Achieving these results while seeing substantial reductions in oral glucocorticoids use provides further evidence of the role of eosinophils in EGPA.

“Though further studies are needed, our results indicate that eliminating oral glucocorticoids may now be an achievable treatment goal while using eosinophil-targeted drugs for EGPA,” said Dr. Wechsler.

Reference:

Michael E. Wechsler, Parameswaran Nair, Benjamin Terrier, Bastian Walz,  Arnaud Bourdin, David R.W. Jayne, David J. Jackson, Florence Roufosse, Lena Börjesson Sjö, Ying Fan, Maria Jison, Benralizumab versus Mepolizumab for Eosinophilic Granulomatosis with Polyangiitis, New England Journal of Medicine, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2311155.