Tiotropium use was effective in improving lung function and quality of life and reduced the frequency of acute exacerbations compared with placebo in patients with early-stage COPD, according to findings recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“Patients with mild or moderate COPD rarely receive medications, because they have few symptoms,” Yumin Zhou, MD, PhD, of the National Center for Respiratory Diseases, Guangzhou, China, and colleagues wrote. “We hypothesized that long-term use of tiotropium would improve lung function and ameliorate the decline in lung function in patients with mild or moderate COPD.”