Clinical studies have shown that
pranlukast (Ono
Pharmaceutical Co., Osaka, Japan) is effective for mild and moderate
asthma. However, it is not well known that
pranlukast is also effective on moderate and severe persistent
asthma in the long term. We studied the effect of
pranlukast on moderate and severe asthmatics by evaluating the change of peak expiratory flow (PEF) and therapeutic scores for 1 year before and during
pranlukast therapy. We gave
pranlukast 225 mg twice daily orally to 25 patients who were receiving more than 400 micrograms/day
beclomethasone inhalation and beta 2 stimulant inhalation with or without oral
corticosteroid.
Pranlukast increased PEF more than 10 L/min in 14 patients in the first 4 weeks. In these 14 patients, 10 patients continued to monitor PEF and kept
asthma diaries for 1 year. We compared the data for 1 year before and during the
pranlukast therapy. During the
pranlukast therapy, PEF significantly increased, puffs of beta 2 stimulant inhalation significantly decreased. The incidence of oral
corticosteroid rescue
therapy reduced, and the mean daily dose of oral
corticosteroid decreased; however, they were not statistically significant. During treatment with
pranlukast, no side effect was observed. From these results, we suggest that
pranlukast is effective for more than half of the moderate and severe persistent asthmatics, and that the effectiveness continues for more than 1 year.