VIENNA, Sept. 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- InterMune, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITMN) announced that new analyses of data from the RECAP extension study of Esbriet (pirfenidone) were presented today at the 2012 Annual Congress of the European Respiratory Society (ERS) in Vienna, Austria by Dr. Ulrich Costabel of the Ruhrlandklinik, Essen, Germany.
The RECAP study is an ongoing open-label extension study evaluating the long-term administration of Esbriet in patients who completed InterMune's Phase 3 CAPACITY program. The CAPACITY program (studies 004 and 006) was designed to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Esbriet in IPF patients with mild to moderate impairment in lung function.
Dr. Costabel presented new analyses of Forced Vital Capacity (FVC) and survival in patients who received placebo in CAPACITY and were newly treated with Esbriet in RECAP. These analyses show that patients with mild-to-moderate IPF newly-treated with Esbriet in RECAP for 60 weeks had similar FVC and survival outcomes when compared to those treated with Esbriet for the same duration in CAPACITY.
Dr. Costabel commented, "The population in this RECAP analysis represents the fourth large, well-defined cohort of IPF patients to be treated with pirfenidone and followed prospectively for more than one year. FVC and survival outcomes in the RECAP patients treated with pirfenidone were highly consistent with those in pirfenidone-treated patients in three previous randomized, controlled Phase 3 studies. While these data should be interpreted with due regard to the limitations inherent to the open-label study design of RECAP, the results provide further support for the role of Esbriet in the treatment of patients with this devastating disease.
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