Study Shows Need to Test More COPD and Asthma Patients for Underdiagnosed Pulmona...(were taken to assess levels of AAT and a...),Health

Of the 454 patients studied, 3.3 percent showed deficient levels of AAT. Low blood levels of AAT are commonly associated with progressive severe emphysema that becomes clinically evident by the third to fourth decade of life; a recent registry showed that 54 percent of AAT deficient patients had emphysema. Less commonly, low levels of AAT are associated with liver disease and cirrhosis.

Interestingly, patients who tested with low AAT did not significantly differ from the COPD/persistent asthma patients with normal levels of AAT in several key pulmonary function criteria, including levels of FEV1, ratios of FEV1 to forced vital capacity (FEV1/FVC), or the number of bronchial infections within the past 12 months. This lack of differentiating characteristics in deficient subjects indicates that if pulmonologists rely on standard screening criteria for Alpha-1 testing, the result will be incorrect and missed diagnoses.

"Our surveillance study found that physicians cannot depend on typical patient profiles to assess whether AAT deficiency screening is necessary. There is no 'face' to AAT deficiency," said D. Kyle Hogarth, MD, FCCP, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University Chicago Medical Center, Director of the Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency Clinical Resource Center at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. "A number of patients who would not normally be screened based on suggested guidelines turned out in fact to be positive for AAT deficiency. In the real-world setting, this suggests that thousands of patients who have been diagnosed with COPD or severe asthma may actually have Alpha-1."

The RAD study was supported by an unrestricted educational grant from CSL Behring, maker of the Alpha1 Proteinase Inhibitor (Human), Zemaira(R).

About Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (Alpha-1)

Alpha-1 antitrypsin is an an
'/>"/>