According to a story from Financial Content, the drug company Arena Pharmaceuticals recently announced that its data results from Phase II clinical trials has been positive. The trial in question is testing etrasimod, a medication that is in development for the treatment of ulcerative colitis. In the study, patients that had taken a 2 mg dose of the drug saw statistically valuable improvement over the patient group that had taken a placebo.
Ulcerative colitis is type of long term inflammatory bowel disease in which ulcers and inflammation affect the colon and rectum. The cause of the condition is unknown. Some common symptoms of ulcerative colitis include weight loss, fever, abdominal pain, anemia, and bloody diarrhea. More serious complications can occur, such as inflammation spreading to other parts of the body, colon cancer, and megacolon. It is possible to treat ulcerative colitis in order to achieve temporary remission, and with appropriate treatment, the condition has no impact on life expectancy. In the most severe cases, the removal of the colon may be necessary. This can cure the condition. To learn more about ulcerative colitis, click here.
In the trials, 33 percent of patients that took the 2 mg etrasimod dose were able to achieve remission of their disease; only 8.1 percent of patients in the placebo group saw remission. In addition to the data indicating that etrasimod was effective in treating ulcerative colitis, the treatment also appears to have few side effects. Although there have been some significant treatment advances for ulcerative colitis, there are few medications that are orally administered once a day like etrasimod.
After positive results from the Phase II trials, Arena Pharmaceuticals will soon begin to proceed with the next stage of its testing for etrasimod. The positive results are also encouraging because it could mean that the investigational drug could have a much greater variety of uses. The company hopes that etrasimod could eventually be used to treat a diverse array of inflammatory and immune diseases, many of which may still be lacking a healthy variety of treatment options.
The trial involved in a total of 156 patients located in 71 different sites across a total of 16 countries.
