World Asthma Day: Itraconazole is Effective Against Acute-Stage ABPA

Submitted by GAtherton on 1 May 2018

The scientific journal Chest has chosen to celebrate World Asthma Day by highlighting several notable research papers as a ‘Special Collection on Asthma’. One of the papers mentioned concerns allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA), which often complicates asthma.

The antifungal drug itraconazole has been used for some time to help manage ABPA and often allows the use of less steroid medication, thus reducing the incidence of adverse effects from long-term use of corticosteroid therapy but it was not know how effective it is generally. This recent paper successfully supports the use of itraconazole as monotherapy against ABPA and although prednisolone was more effective there was still a very definite place for itraconazole in ABPA therapy as it is also very effective and gave fewer side effects. Itraconazole is demonstrated as a useful alternative to steroids for ABPA.