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Rarely used emphysema treatment shown to be effective

The progression of genetic emphysema, not caused by smoking, was slowed by an intravenous treatment doctors don't use because its results have been difficult to measure.

By Stephen Feller

TORONTO, May 28 (UPI) -- Injecting the Alpha-1 antitrypsin, or AAT, protein into patients with genetically-caused emphysema has been shown as an effective treatment that slows the progression of the lung disease.

AAT deficiency is an inherited disorder that can cause emphysema, unrelated to smoking, because the protein gets backed up in the liver, where it is made, and does not reach the lungs. Intravenous treatment to boost the protein's levels in the blood and lungs has existed for 25 years but is not often used because of difficulty measuring its effectiveness.

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"This treatment has now been studied in our center using the most sensitive measure of lung structure - a radiologic measurement of lung density - allowing us to detect changes far earlier than can be seen with standard breathing tests," said Dr. Kenneth Chapman, Director of the Asthma and Airways Center at Toronto Western Hospital, in a press release. "We can now say with certainty that augmentation therapy is effective and should be given to patients with emphysema caused by this deficiency."

Researchers in the study were able to see how the treatment was working by using CT scans to measure lung density in 93 patients who received the AAT treatment and 86 who received a placebo. Lung density loss in the group which received AAT injections was shown to be just under half of what the placebo group experienced.

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While loss of lung density and progression of emphysema was slowed during treatment, researchers note this was true only when measuring total lung capacity, and did not hold when measuring functional residual capacity.

The study is published in The Lancet.

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