Source: Nat Genet  |  Posted 9 years ago

Desloratadine produces significant relief from the signs and symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis (SAR), as well as nasal congestion, say researchers in the United States.

Their four -week, multi-centre, parallel-group, double-blind study, directed by Dr W E Berger and colleagues at the Southern California Research, Mission Viejo, California, and collaborators in the Desloratadine Study Group, also found improvement of symptoms of seasonal allergic asthma.

The clinicians point out that while antihistamines relieve most symptoms of SAR, an exception is concomitant relief of nasal congestion, which, in turn, is often the most troublesome symptom among patients. A significant treatment advance would be a non- sedating antihistamine that significantly decreases nasal congestion and improves SAR symptoms.

A cohort of 331 patients with SAR and mild seasonal allergic asthma were enrolled to test the safety and efficacy of desloratadine 5 mg once a day compared with placebo. All patients evaluated their SAR and asthma symptoms twice a day, and recorded 12-hour reflective and instantaneous severity evaluation scores.

The primary measure of treatment efficacy with desloratadine was the difference from baseline in AM/PM reflective total symptom scores. Clinicians also analyzed the changes among each member of the cohort of their SAR and asthma symptoms.

The researchers found that desloratadine, when compared with placebo, produced a significant reduction in mean AM/PM reflective total symptom scores for SAR. This difference began with the first dose of the drug and continued throughout days one to 15 (-4.90 compared with -2.98) and days one to 29 (-5.47 compared with -3.73).

Desloratadine significantly decreased AM/PM reflective total asthma symptom scores for days 1 to 15. and AM/PM reflective nasal congestion scores over days one to 15, and days one to 29. The clinicians found that desloratadine was safe and well tolerated; by the patients, and adverse events were similar overall among treated patients to those on placebo.