Glaxo's Breo lung drug trial fails to show it extends life

9th Sep 2015 07:18

(ShareCast News) - Initial results of GlaxoSmithKline and Theravance's study to understand mortality on the Breo Ellipta inhaler for the treatment of chronic obtrusive pulmonary disease showed that it failed to prolong the life of patients.In a clinical trial of 16,485 patients from 43 countries, patients were found to be 12.2% less at risk of dying than those on placebo, a difference Glaxo said was not large enough to be significant.The drug was shown to reduce the rate of decline in lung function. However, Glaxo said that as the primary endpoint was not met, statistical significance could be inferred from this result.Eric Dube, who heads up Glaxo's Global Respiratory Franchise, said the trial was still important as it marked the first time that survival has been studied in this under-researched co-morbid patient population."While we didn't achieve statistical significance on the primary endpoint, we believe the full data set will be beneficial and informative to the respiratory and cardiovascular scientific community," said Dube.