The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on Wednesday approved Teva Pharmaceuticals’ Cinqair (reslizumab) for the treatment of severe asthma, after a study showed promising results.

Approving the drug, FDA said adult patients might take Cinqair together with other medicines for the treatment and maintenance of severe asthma. Asthmatic patients who have a history of severe attacks are expected to get significant respite from the supportive drug.

FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation & Research Director Badrul Chowdhury said, “Health care providers and their patients with severe asthma now have another treatment option to consider when the disease is not well controlled by their current asthma therapies.”

The federal agency approved the drug after a study showed promising results. The study revealed that asthma patients who received either Cinqair or placebo every month as a supportive treatment had fewer asthma attacks and a longer interval between the attacks than others in the placebo group.

Those who received the drug also showed notable improvements in lung function as manifested through the volume of air exhaled by them in a second.

However, FDA stressed that the drug should be administered by a qualified medical professional in a strictly clinical setting to ensure that appropriate care and management is immediately available to the patient in case the drug causes an allergic reaction, which might be life-threatening.