TY - JOUR T1 - Anti-IgE: changing lives in clinical practice? JF - European Respiratory Review JO - EUROPEAN RESPIRATORY REVIEW SP - 59 LP - 60 DO - 10.1183/09059180.00010400 VL - 16 IS - 104 AU - S. T. Holgate Y1 - 2007/09/01 UR - http://err.ersjournals.com/content/16/104/59.abstract N2 - As physicians, we frequently encounter patients with severe persistent asthma who remain symptomatic despite receiving the best available treatment and optimal management efforts. If we are unable to achieve adequate asthma control despite using all available therapeutic options, these patients remain exposed to a high risk of serious exacerbations and asthma-related mortality. Addressing the unmet medical needs of this difficult-to-treat population is one of the greatest challenges in asthma management. Asthma frequently has an allergic component. Immunoglobulin (Ig)E is central to the pathogenesis of allergic asthma and presents an ideal target for novel therapeutic agents. Omalizumab, the first anti-IgE treatment, suppresses IgE-mediated allergic/inflammatory reactions by binding to free IgE. In clinical studies, add-on omalizumab significantly reduced asthma exacerbation rates and the need for emergency medical interventions, and improved quality of life, in patients with severe persistent allergic asthma who were symptomatic despite taking regular high-dose inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting β2-adrenoceptor agonists. I had great pleasure in chairing a Novartis-sponsored satellite symposium entitled “Anti-IgE: changing lives in clinical practice?” at the 16th Annual European Respiratory Society Congress (2006) held in Munich, Germany. The symposium provided an opportunity to bring together a distinguished faculty of experts in the field to discuss the role of anti-IgE therapy in addressing the unmet needs of patients with severe and poorly controlled asthma. In the symposium, we discussed the central role of … ER -