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"Comfortable Day" Improve Significantly For Patients With Allergic Rhinitis Using Levocetirizine: Presented at ERS

By Cameron Johnston

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND -- September 8, 2004 -- Symptom-free days or days where symptoms were "present or absent but not disturbing" increased by more than 30% among patients using levocetirizine to manage their perennial allergic rhinitis.

In a double blind randomised controlled trial, 454 subjects received either levocetirizine 5 mg/day or placebo over a 30-day period. Subjects received the drugs for 4 a total of 4 weeks, following a 1-week drug free run-in period.

Symptoms were scored on a 3-point scale with 0 representing no symptoms, 1 representing symptoms that were "present but not disturbing" and onward up to 3 in which symptoms were described as severe. Scoring was recorded for sneezing, rhinorrhoea, nasal congestion, and nasal or ocular itching, so subjects could conceivably have scored a total of 15 points.

Following 4 weeks of treatment, there was a 55% decrease in mean symptoms scores for those in the levocetirizine group compared with the placebo group. Also, there was an increase in "comfortable days" in which symptoms were either absent or "present but not disturbing" of 3.4 days for leveocetirizine compared with placebo (12.78 days with minimal symptoms vs. 9.38 days).

According to the study author, Dr. Alain Didier, Department of Pneumonology and Allergies, Hôpital Larrey, Toulouse, France, the treatment benefit was seen as early as the first day of the study for those in the levocetirizine group, while more than 50% were having comfortable days by the second week of the study. No patients in the placebo group were reporting comfortable days, that early.

Overall, the mean changes in symptom scores were significantly improved among subjects using levocetirizine compared with subjects using the placebo at the end of the first week, and the improvements continued throughout the 4-week study.

Twice as many subjects in the placebo group reported "no change in symptoms" compared with the study group, while the number of subjects in the levocertirizine group showing an improvement was approximately 30% greater.

"Over the first week and over the total treatment period, total symptoms scores on the 5 domains were significantly lower in the levocetirizine group as compared to the placebo group. Improvements indicated that the mean symptoms score was halved with levocetirizine -- i.e., a greater than 55% improvement by the end of the study," Dr. Didier said.


[Presentation Title: "Efficacy Of Levocetirizine in Perennial Allergic Rhinitis (PAR) as Measured by the Number of Comfortable Days." Poster 840]

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