Thousands of asthma patients could be helped by the first drug in a generation to attack the disease in a new way, early trials suggest.
The drug is the first to relax the airways and reduce inflammation at the same time, and could eventually become an alternative treatment for many sufferers, scientists hope.
Four early trials on a total of 79 patients showed improvements in breathing comparable to those offered by existing drugs for patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), researchers report in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Professor Clive Page, of King’s College London, who led the study, said: “From the first patient on, we saw really quite dramatic improvements in lung function. It’s a completely new mechanism for producing airway