IPF Patients on Esbriet Live Approximately 2.5 Years Longer Than Untreated Patients, Study Finds

Esbriet (pirfenidone) improved life expectancy in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) by approximately 2.5 years compared to best supportive care, according to recent research.

The study, “Predicting Life Expectancy For Pirfenidone In Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis,” was published in the Journal of Managed Care Pharmacy.

Esbriet has been shown to be effective and safe in treating IPF, according to results from the Phase 3 ASCEND (NCT01366209, 52 weeks) and the CAPACITY (NCT00287716 and NCT00287729, 72 weeks) trials, and also the RECAP trial (NCT00662038, 98 weeks), an extension study that assessed the long-term safety of the drug in patients who had completed one of the previous trials.

These studies showed that Esbriet significantly reduced all-cause mortality at 12 months by 48 percent.

Non-drug treatments for IPF include best supportive care (BSC), a therapeutic approach that prioritizes symptom management, and the early identification and treatment of disease manifestations.

“BSC may include pulmonary rehabilitation, supplemental oxygen therapy, and/or other symptomatic treatments,” researchers wrote. “In general, BSC is not thought to influence the dismal survival associated with a diagnosis of IPF.”

To further investigate life expectancy in IPF patients taking Esbriet compared to those receiving only BSC (the placebo arm of the trials), researchers analyzed data from the ASCEND, CAPACITY and RECAP trials, and also from the Inova Fairfax Hospital database.

The analysis indicated that the mean life expectancy was 8.72 additional years in patients taking Esbriet and 6.24 years with BSC. As a result, Esbriet improved life expectancy by nearly 2.5 years compared to BSC.

Of note, researchers also found that treatment with Esbriet recovered 25 percent of the expected years of life lost due to IPF.

Together, these results support the conclusion that Esbriet treatment is a reliable and valuable IPF treatment, and improves patients’ life expectancy.

“Our survival analysis suggested that in this population of patients with IPF, treatment with [Esbriet] improves life expectancy compared with BSC,” researchers wrote. “The estimated magnitude of benefit with [Esbriet] was substantial, suggesting that [Esbriet] treatment improves life expectancy by 2.47 years compared with BSC. This could represent a 25% recuperation of the years of life lost due to IPF compared with the life expectancy in a corresponding general population.”

The study was funded by InterMune International, a wholly owned subsidiary of Roche.