International Journal of COPD (Aug 2017)

Severe exacerbation and pneumonia in COPD patients treated with fixed combinations of inhaled corticosteroid and long-acting beta2 agonist

  • Yang HH,
  • Lai CC,
  • Wang YH,
  • Yang WC,
  • Wang CY,
  • Wang HC,
  • Chen L,
  • Yu CJ

Journal volume & issue
Vol. Volume 12
pp. 2477 – 2485

Abstract

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Hsi-Hsing Yang,1,2 Chih-Cheng Lai,3 Ya-Hui Wang,4 Wei-Chih Yang,5 Cheng-Yi Wang,4,* Hao-Chien Wang,6,* Likwang Chen,5 Chong-Jen Yu6 On behalf of Taiwan Clinical Trial Consortium for Respiratory Diseases (TCORE) 1Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Chi Mei Medical Center, Tainan, 2Department of Biotechnology, Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Tainan, 3Department of Intensive Care Medicine, Chi Mei Medical Center, Liouying, Tainan, 4Department of Internal Medicine, Cardinal Tien Hospital and School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Fu-Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City, 5Institute of Population Health Sciences, National Health Research Institutes, Zhunan, Miaoli County, 6Department of Internal Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital and College of Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan *These authors contributed equally to this work Background: It remains unclear whether severe exacerbation and pneumonia of COPD differs between patients treated with budesonide/formoterol and those treated with fluticasone/salmeterol. Therefore, we conducted a comparative study of those who used budesonide/formoterol and those treated with fluticasone/salmeterol for COPD.Methods: Subjects in this population-based cohort study comprised patients with COPD who were treated with a fixed combination of budesonide/formoterol or fluticasone/salmeterol. All patients were recruited from the Taiwan National Health Insurance database. The outcomes including severe exacerbations, pneumonia, and pneumonia requiring mechanical ventilation (MV) were measured.Results: During the study period, 11,519 COPD patients receiving fluticasone/salmeterol and 7,437 patients receiving budesonide/formoterol were enrolled in the study. Pairwise matching (1:1) of fluticasone/salmeterol and budesonide/formoterol populations resulted in to two similar subgroups comprising each 7,295 patients. Patients receiving fluticasone/salmeterol had higher annual rate and higher risk of severe exacerbation than patients receiving budesonide/formoterol (1.2219/year vs 1.1237/year, adjusted rate ratio, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.07–1.10). In addition, patients receiving fluticasone/salmeterol had higher incidence rate and higher risk of pneumonia than patients receiving budesonide/formoterol (12.11 per 100 person-years vs 10.65 per 100 person-years, adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 1.13; 95% CI, 1.08–1.20). Finally, patients receiving fluticasone/salmeterol had higher incidence rate and higher risk of pneumonia requiring MV than patients receiving budesonide/formoterol (3.94 per 100 person-years vs 3.47 per 100 person-years, aHR, 1.14; 95% CI, 1.05–1.24). A similar trend was seen before and after propensity score matching analysis, intention-to-treat, and as-treated analysis with and without competing risk.Conclusions: Based on this retrospective observational study, long-term treatment with fixed combination budesonide/formoterol was associated with fewer severe exacerbations, pneumonia, and pneumonia requiring MV than fluticasone/salmeterol in COPD patients. Keywords: COPD, ICS/LABA, exacerbation, pneumonia

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