Researchers have abandoned trials on the drug Actimmune as a therapy for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) after patients died while taking part.
IPF is a chronic lung disease, and sufferers often die from severe shortness of breath.
So far no drug has been developed to treat IPF, and the manufacturers of Actimmune – a synthetic version of interferon gamma-1b designed to reduce infections in patients with chronic granulomatous, a rare blood disorder – believed that its drug could be the answer.
But when researchers tested it on IPF patients, they found that 14.5 per cent of patients were dying compared with 12.7 per cent taking a placebo.
(Source: FDA website).