Scots patients first in UK to be given new lung disease drug on NHS

PATIENTS in Scotland with an incurable lung condition will be the first in the UK to get a new lifeextending drug on the NHS.

The Scottish Medicines Consortium has given the go-ahead for selexipag to be prescribed on the NHS to patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

The illness disproportionately affects women and most often strikes patients aged in their 30s and 40s. Early symptoms include breathlessness, fatigue, dizziness and chest pain during exercise that is often mistaken for being unfit or asthma.

However, as the illness progresses, these symptoms are experienced during rest and can result in patients becoming largely housebound.

Selexipag, also known by the brand name Uptravi, will be made available on a long-term basis to individuals who are at stage three of the disease, when even everyday tasks such as housework and climbing the stair have become exhausting, and who are not responding to existing treatments. Left untreated, patients at stage three live only two and a half years on average.

The condition causes an increase in blood pressure in the blood vessels between the right side of the heart and the lungs.

The new drug, which comes as a tablet that can be taken at home twice a day, is expected to benefit about 11 patients during the first year and 42 by year five.

It has been shown in clinical trials to slow progression of the disease and significantly improve quality of life, in some cases allowing patients to return to work.

Dr Martin Johnson, consultant physician at the Scottish Pulmonary Vascular Unit, said: “This will increase the options open to people with PAH in Scotland and represents a significant step forward in how we can treat this disease.”

In Scotland, there are currently 620 patients being managed for PAH at the Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, which is Scotland’s only specialist centre for the condition.

Selexipag is the first oral medication that targets one of the three key pathways – the prostacyclin pathway – known to play a role in the development of PAH.

Current therapies that target this pathway, although effective, can be difficult for patients to administer since they involve intravenous infusions in hospital or inhaling drugs via nebulisers up to nine times a day, including overnight.

This is a great step forward