A cheap cancer drug is just as effective and safe in treating a common cause of loss of vision as an expensive alternative, according to research funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment (HTA) Programme.
The two year study, which published its results in The Lancet, compared anti-cancer drug Avastin (bevacizumab) with Lucentis (ranibizumab), the drug more commonly used for treating wet age-related macular degeneration (wet AMD). Wet AMD is a major cause of sight loss in older people, with at least 23,000 diagnosed with the condition in the UK each year. Without treatment, two thirds of people with the condition experience severe loss of sight within two years of being diagnosed. The IVAN trial is one of the largest ever carried out in the field of eye disease in the UK, recruiting 610 people with wet AMD from 23 hospitals. Patients received injections of the drug into the affected eye every month for the first three months. Groups were then subdivided to receive either injections at every visit thereafter or only if the specialist decided there was persistent disease. The IVAN project involved a team of scientists and eye specialists from Queen’s University Belfast, Bristol, Liverpool, Southampton and Oxford universities. The results showed that sight was equally well preserved with either of the two drugs. The study also highlighted that Avastin is around 10 times cheaper than Lucentis, potentially saving the NHS £84.5 m annually.
