About one-third of adult asthma patients treated prophylactically with the macrolide azithromycin were found fully relieved from exacerbations associated with the disease, according to the data compiled in a recently conducted study. In a real-world study presented at American College of Chest Physicians annual meeting — CHEST 2021 — held online, Hanan Ajay, a fifth-year medical student at the University of Liverpool in England said that, of the 34 patients included in the observation study, only one did not have a reduction in infections by at least 50 percent compared with the historical average of 6.44 infections a year. Overall, the annual average for patients while on azithromycin was 1.47 infections a year (P<0.01), and 12 of the patients in the study had zero infections while on azithromycin, the study showed. “Azithromycin is a safe and effective prophylactic drug in reducing exacerbations in this real-world study,” the researcher said while presenting the findings.