Tiotropium beneficial to patients with mild COPD

Treatment with tiotropium appears to reduce the risk of clinically important deterioration (CID) in patients with mild-to-moderate chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), including those with fewer respiratory symptoms, according to a study.

For the study, researchers performed a post hoc analysis of the 24-month Tie-COPD study, which compared 18-μg tiotropium with placebo in the treatment of patients with mild-to-moderate COPD.

The primary outcome of CID was defined as a decrease of ≥100 mL in trough forced expiratory volume in 1 s, an increase of ≥2 unit in COPD Assessment Test (CAT) score, or the presence of moderate-to-severe exacerbation. The time to the first occurrence of one of these events was logged as the time to first CID.

Of the 771 patients included in the full analysis set, 643 (83.4 percent) had at least one CID event. Compared with placebo, tiotropium was associated with a significant reduction in the risk of CID and longer time to first CID (adjusted hazard ratio, 0.58, 95 percent confidence interval, 0.49–0.68; p<0.001).

The beneficial effect of tiotropium on the risk of CID was consistently seen in various subgroups, including patients with a CAT score <10, those with mMRC score <2, and those with mild COPD.