Glucocorticoids and Mepolizumab in Eosinophilic Asthma

report that treatment with mepolizumab, a monoclonal antibody against interleukin-5, allowed a modest reduction in the maintenance dose of oral gluco -corticoids in patients who had severe eosino-philic asthma. The absolute reduction in the median dose of prednisone in the mepolizumab group was from 10.0 mg per day to 3.1 mg per day (as compared with a reduction from 12.5 mg per day to 10.0 mg per day in the placebo group).Is there reason to believe that the magnitude of the achieved reduction will be clinically rele-vant to patients? Will it reduce glucocorticoid-induced side effects, and will the other benefits to patients that were described in the study miti-gate the costs of treatment with mepolizumab?Did the authors obtain any objective measures of adherence to prednisone, such as contempo-raneous serum prednisone and cortisol levels?