Could Biologics Be Right For Your Asthma? What Patients Need to Know

When seasonal allergies, a lingering cold infection, rapid weather changes, increased stress, or another asthma trigger irritates and inflames your airway, it isn’t long before you’re coughing, wheezing, and feeling short of breath. 

When trigger avoidance isn’t possible, minimizing your asthma symptom exacerbations comes down to effective daily controller meds and using your quick-relief inhaler. 

But what if there was a way to reduce the airway inflammatory cascade at the molecular level, significantly lowering your risk of asthma attacks? 

That’s exactly what an innovative new therapy called biologics aims to do, and our team at Fivestar Pulmonary Associates can determine if it’s right for you. 

Understanding biologics therapy

Biologics are add-on, targeted therapies for moderate to severe asthma. They’re designed to target and interrupt the specific immune pathways that drive airway inflammation and lead to asthma flare‑ups.

These protein‑based injections or infusions target specific immune pathways involved in asthma. Each biologic is designed to block or neutralize the inflammatory molecules driving airway swelling in certain asthma phenotypes — most commonly allergic and eosinophilic asthma, and in select cases, other non‑eosinophilic inflammatory patterns.

Rather than simply relaxing the muscles around your airway to lower your risk of severe symptoms or alleviate an attack once it’s underway, biologics intercept certain inflammatory molecules before they can trigger airway swelling and mucus production. This helps prevent asthma attacks by reducing the airway inflammation that triggers them. 

Candidates for asthma biologics

If your moderate to severe asthma remains unchecked by the highest dose of conventional inhaled medicines — both long‑acting controller inhalers and short‑acting rescue bronchodilators — you may be a strong candidate for add-on biologics support. 

Our team typically recommends biologic therapy when blood testing indicates elevated biomarkers (e.g., high eosinophils) for specific asthma types, particularly in cases where uncontrolled symptoms have been severe enough to: 

• Prompt frequent rescue inhaler use (more than twice a week)
• Demand multiple courses of oral corticosteroids over 12 months
• Trigger breathing problems that routinely wake you up at night
• Cause you to avoid exercise and other activities to avert a flare-up
• Require an ER visit or hospital stay more than twice in one year 

Biologics carry additional benefits for patients with certain co-existing conditions, such as chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps. In such cases, the therapy simultaneously targets severe asthma and its related inflammatory co-morbidities.

When biologics aren’t beneficial

Biologic therapy is exclusively reserved for patients with moderate to severe asthma that fails to improve under a maximized approach (e.g., adding a second controller medication and/or switching to a high-dose corticosteroid inhaler). 

Biologics aren’t needed for mild or moderate asthma that’s consistently well-controlled, and they don’t work at all for patients without the specific inflammatory biomarkers the medications are designed to target and disrupt.

Asthma control through biologics

If our comprehensive asthma control evaluation shows that you’re qualified for biologic therapy, you can expect a straightforward treatment protocol that’s easy to stick with. 

Depending on which FDA-approved biologic matches your asthma type, the medication is typically administered via injection in our office once every 2-8 weeks (though some newer options can last up to 6 months). It’s that simple.

By disrupting the first step in the cascading immune system overreaction that drives airway inflammation and constriction, consistent biologic therapy for asthma can:

• Reduce exacerbations by about 50% in many patients
• Lead to significant improvements in lung function and breathing 
• Curtail or eliminate your reliance on high-dose oral steroid medicines
• Prevent severe asthma exacerbations and help keep you out of the ER
• Help you stay active during the day and support better sleep at night

Biologics are especially effective for controlling eosinophilic asthma — the type that’s responsible for the majority of severe asthma cases. 

Is biologic therapy right for you?

If a maximized therapy approach still hasn’t gotten your asthma under control, you don’t have to resign yourself to a life of near-daily rescue inhaler use and frequent ER visits. 

Biologic therapy may be exactly what you need to achieve lasting asthma symptom control, so you can breathe easier and get back to your active life with confidence. 

To find out how you can benefit, fill out our Asthma Control Test online and then schedule a visit with our experts at Fivestar Pulmonary Associates in Allen, McKinney, or Plano, Texas.