(Health Korea News / Yoo Ji-in) Bayer Korea’s retinal disease treatment ‘Eylia’ 8mg (eylia, ingredient name aflibercept), which has a capacity four times that of the existing product, will be covered by health insurance starting October 1.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare notice, 8mg of Eylea is recommended for patients with subfoveal choroidal neovascularization due to age-related macular degeneration, diabetic macular edema, hemoglobin A1C (HbA1C) of 10% or less, and the shortest central retinal thickness. Health insurance benefits apply for administration to patients who meet the conditions of 300µm or more.
Eylea 8mg is a drug that increases the durability by four times the dose (molar dose) of Eylea 2mg, which has led the anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (Anti-VEGF) treatment market for the past 10 years based on its vision improvement and maintenance effects and safety profile. all. Last April, it was approved in Korea for the treatment of vision impairment caused by neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (nAMD) and diabetic macular edema (DME).
Among the currently approved anti-VEGFs, Eylea 8mg is the only one that can extend the administration interval up to 20 weeks for the treatment of vision impairment caused by nAMD and DME, and is evaluated to have dramatically lowered the treatment burden on patients with fewer injections.
Eylea 8mg demonstrated a non-inferior visual acuity improvement effect even with fewer injections compared to the control group Eylea 2mg in both the PURSAR study conducted on nAMD patients and the PHOTON study conducted on DME patients. The anatomical results also showed a statistically significant improvement, and furthermore, it was confirmed that the strong retinal fluid control effect was maintained until the 48th week. In both studies, no adverse reactions such as endophthalmitis or occlusive retinal vasculitis were observed until week 48, and a safety profile similar to that of Eylea 2 mg was observed.
Professor Park Gyu-hyung of the Department of Ophthalmology at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital said, “nAMD and DME are difficult to completely cure, so long-term treatment is essential to improve and maintain vision, so a new treatment option was needed that could reduce the burden of hospital visits and injection treatments on patients.” , “Eylea 8 mg adds to the vision improvement effect and safety profile demonstrated over the past 10 years with Eylea 2 mg, and the dosing interval can be extended up to 20 weeks,” he explained.
Eylea 8mg is injected once a month for the first 3 months, and then the dosing interval can be extended up to 16 weeks based on the doctor’s judgment on the results of vision and anatomical examinations. Afterwards, the dosing interval can be extended up to 20 weeks through a treat-and-extend dose regimen while maintaining stable visual acuity and anatomical test results.
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