Conditions: Asthma
Keywords: Asthma Avandia
Allocation: NON_RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 16
Healthy volunteers: yes

Brief summary:
Asthma is a common chronic disease characterized by airway inflammation and bronchoconstriction. This study utilizes the drug rosiglitazone (Avandia)to treat the effects of airway inflammation in patients with asthma.

The study will be conducted on 14 adult steroid naive patients with asthma. Patients with qualifying pulmonary function testing values will be eligible for enrollment. Enrolled subjects will be treated with rosiglitazone orally at 2mg dose for 4 weeks. Patients will be reassessed and dosing will increase in 4 week increments up to 8mg.

Detailed description:
The current standard-of-care utilizes corticosteroids to down-regulate the inflammatory state in patients with asthma. However, corticosteroids have many side effects and are not universally effective. New safe anti-inflammatory agents are needed to help modulate the disease. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor agonists are widely used to manage diabetes mellitus, another common chronic disease. These agents have been study models and have been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects in lung tissue. Case reports have noted improvement in asthma symptoms in patients being treated with these agents. These agents are ideally placed for human research given their long record of safe use in the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Arms:
arm 1: Subjects took rosiglitazone 2 mg for 4 weeks, then 4mg for 4 weeks, then 8 mg for 4 weeks

Interventions: intervention 1: rosiglitazone
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: 2mg, 4mg, 8mg

Protocol document: