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New Treatment for Lung Disease
– Reported December 16, 2014
It kills as many people each year as breast cancer, but you may have never heard of it. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF, is a deadly lung disease and until now there were no effective treatments. Now not one, but two new drugs are changing the game for people with the disease.
Robert Krabill cant go far before the symptoms of his disease start to show.
Its when I get up and start walking around or going someplace or doing something, then the breathing takes its toll, Robert Krabill told Ivanhoe.
Robert has idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis or IPF for short. Its a disease that causes scar tissue to form on his lungs.
Patients might experience shortness of breath, coughing, fatigue, inability to do the things they usually want to do, explained Daniel Culver, D.O., Pulmonologist and Staff Physician at Cleveland Clinic.
Those with IPF are typically given three to five years to live. Until now, there were no treatments to slow it down.
If you compare IPF to many cancers, the prognosis for IPF is far worse, said Dr. Culver.
But two new FDA approved drugs are offering patients hope for the first time. In clinical trials, nintedanib and pirfenidone slowed down lung scarring and reduced breathing difficulties by about half. They are the first medicines approved to treat the disease.
Dr. Culver explained, Having two medications where we had zero for so many years and where we gave people a death sentence for so many years when we made the diagnosis is a huge step forward.
Robert will start on the medication in the next couple of weeks. He hopes it will give him a little more time. Submit
See what happens and maybe be here a little longer, Krabill said.
These two drugs were approved by the FDA in October, 2014. IPF is the leading cause of lung transplants in the U.S. Experts arent exactly sure what causes it but people who have experienced inhalation exposures to smoking or dust are more at risk.
