Emerging Treatments for COPD: Evidence to Date on Revefenacin

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the 4th leading cause of death in the United States. Due to the substantial public health burden of COPD, there has been a lot of interest in developing new drug therapies, directed at improving the symptomatology and quality of life in COPD patients. Revefenacin is the first once daily nebulized long acting muscarinic antagonist for COPD treatment. It offers an advantage over other nebulized bronchodilators, as once daily administration may improve patient compliance. Revefenacin has a rapid onset of action, is long acting and significantly improves lung function (FEV1) in patients with COPD. It can play a major role in the management of COPD, especially in patients who have difficulty mastering inhaler techniques and those with low baseline FEV1 who may have difficulty generating flow with an inhaler. This manuscript is a review on revefenacin and outlines the pharmacologic profile and the clinical trials which have evaluated it’s the efficacy and safety. The authors also discuss their own perspective on the potential role of revefenacin in COPD management.