AstraZeneca: Symbicort "more effective than Seretide"

Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group AstraZeneca says that its Symbicort (budesonide/formoterol) single-inhaler therapy provides greater improvement in key measures of asthma control and simplifies management of the disease when compared to GlaxoSmithKline's Seretide (fluticasone/salmeterol).

Results from the COSMOS trial demonstrate that a single-inhaler regimen of the agent reduces the risk of a severe asthma attack 25%, the primary endpoint of the trial, as well as lowering the total number of severe asthma attacks 22% versus Seretide.

The head-to-head, randomized, open-label trial of the two commonly-used combination treatments examined 2,143 patients with moderate-to-severe asthma at centers across 16 countries.