Hi OPC,
Initially, I also thought the FUSE study was involving new treatment with Exubera. However, from the methods section of the abstract that we’ve been looking at, it states “A non-interventional follow-up study…” which to me indicates no drug treatment. Does anyone else know whether that would imply treatment or not? Please correct if that is an inaccurate assumption.
It appears that the study data from original 17 trials (7,448 patients = retrospective data) was combined with a subset of those that enrolled in the follow-up study (2,637 patients = prospective data) to make up the FUSE study. From the abstract we don’t know anything about the current health (did it change since original trials?) or history (cancer, smoking, etc) of the patients enrolled in FUSE. Additionally, from the FUSE design on the clinicaltrials.gov site, there is no indication that cancer was screened out in the follow-up study, or any other health risks for that matter.
All I’m saying is that until we see the FUSE results in detail, i.e. correlation to smoking and other health factors, I don’t think we can make any new interpretations.
