Comparison of Long-term Response and Remission to Omalizumab and Anti-IL-5/IL-5R Using Different Criteria in a Real-life Cohort of Severe Asthma Patients

Evaluation of biologic therapy response is vital to monitor its effectiveness. Authors have proposed various response criteria including good responder, super-responder, non-responder, and clinical remission. To ascertain the prevalence of response and clinical remission after long-term treatment (> 6 months) of anti-IgE and anti-IL-5/IL-5Rα biologics, compare these results with existing criteria, and identify predictors for non-responders and clinical remission. A multicenter, real-life study involving severe asthma patients in Spain. Various outcomes were assessed to gauge response and clinical remission against established criteria. The study included 429 patients, 209 (48.7%) omalizumab, 112 (26.1%) mepolizumab, 19 (4.4%) reslizumab and 89 (20.7%) benralizumab, with a mean treatment duration of 55.3 ± 38.8 months. In the final year of treatment, 218 (50.8%) were super-responders, 173 (40.3%) responders, 38 (8.9%) non-responders, and clinical remission in 116 (27%), without differences among biologics. The short-term non-responders (< 6 months) were 25/545 (4.6%). Substantial variations in response and clinical remission were observed when applying different published criteria. Predictors of non-response included higher BMI (OR:1.14; 95% CI:1.06–1.23; p < 0.001), admissions at ICU (2.69; 1.30–5.56; p = 0.01), high count of SAE (1.21; 1.03–1.42; p = 0.02) before biologic treatment. High FEV1% (0.96; 0.95–0.98; p < 0.001), a high ACT score (0.93; 0.88–0.99; p = 0.01) before biologic treatment or NSAID-ERD (0.52; 0.29–0.91; p = 0.02) showed strong associations with achieving clinical remission. A substantial proportion of severe asthma patients treated long-term with omalizumab or anti-IL5/IL-5Rα achieved a good response. Differences in response criteria highlight the need for harmonization in defining response and clinical remission in biologic therapy to enable meaningful cross-study comparisons.