The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 269 No 7228 p838
14 December 2002

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British Society for Immunology (immunology.org)
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Levocetirizine superior to desloratadine for allergic rhinitis?

Levocetirizine (Xyzal) is more effective than desloratadine (NeoClarityn) at controlling the symptoms of seasonal allergic rhinitis, researchers report.

Professor James Day, Kingston General Hospital, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues randomly assigned subjects to receive levocetirizine 5mg (n=141), desloratadine (n=140) or placebo (n=92) once daily and exposed them to ragweed pollen in an environmental exposure unit on two consecutive days.

Levocetirizine had a faster onset and longer duration of action than desloratadine. Improvements in symptoms were seen one hour after taking levocetirizine compared with after three hours for those taking desloratadine. Throughout the study both treatments were found to be superior to placebo at alleviating the major symptoms of hay fever. In addition, levocetirizine was superior to desloratadine after the first dose for all symptoms other than itchy throat and cough.

The study was sponsored by UCB Pharma, manufacturer of levocetirizine. Data were presented at the annual meeting of the British Society for Immunology and the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology, held in Harrogate last week.

A spokesman for Schering-Plough, manufacturer of desloratadine, told The Journal that the company warned against drawing conclusions from the study. He said that conclusions cannot be based on the results of a single study, such as this, and that the results were not consistent with multiple studies of desloratadine using similar models, data from which have been published in peer review journals.