SAN DIEGO, Jan. 12, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MediciNova, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company that is publicly traded on the Nasdaq Global Market (Nasdaq:MNOV) and the Hercules Market of the Osaka Securities Exchange (Code Number: 4875), today announced interim results from two planned reviews of the unaudited data for its MN-221-CL-006 Phase II study, which remains ongoing. These reviews included data from a total of 18 (eight treated with standard care only and ten treated with MN-221 plus standard care) of 36 planned patients with severe, acute exacerbations of asthma treated in emergency departments. All patients received standardized care consisting of inhaled albuterol, ipratropium and oral steroid treatment. No safety concerns with adding MN-221 to standardized care were identified in these reviews. The hospitalization rate among patients treated with standardized care only was 50 percent (four of eight), the anticipated rate, compared to a hospitalization rate of 10 percent (one of ten) among patients receiving MN-221 plus standardized care. All hospitalizations were due to asthma exacerbations which were judged to be unrelated to study medication and therefore do not raise safety concerns for adding MN-221 to standardized care. Improvement in pulmonary function measured in FEV1 (forced expiratory volume in 1 second) and decreased symptoms of difficulty breathing on the Modified Borg Dyspnea Index Scale, a clinical rating scale for shortness of breath, were observed in both treatment groups. Improvement in FEV1 values generally appeared to be greater for patients receiving MN221 in addition to standardized treatment. As specified in the protocol for the MN-221-CL-006 study, no inferential statistics (i.e., p-values) will be calculated for this study.
