Smartphone app shows improvements in anxiety for people with pulmonary fibrosis

Key takeaways:

• Almee is a smartphone app that provides CBT to treat anxiety in people with pulmonary fibrosis.
• Participants reported a 2.7-point improvement in GAD-7 scores after 9 weeks of using Almee.

Patients with pulmonary fibrosis who used a smartphone app that offers cognitive behavioral therapy showed improvements in anxiety levels and quality of life, according to a press release.

Almee was developed by Alex Therapeutics and Vicore Pharma to provide 9 weeks of CBT for the treatment of anxiety for people with pulmonary fibrosis, according to the release from Alex Therapeutics.

To test the effectiveness of Almee, the companies conducted a randomized controlled parallel-group clinical study with 108 participants. Results were quantified with GAD-7 anxiety scores and King’s Brief Interstitial Lung Disease (K-BILD) quality of life and psychological domain scores.

At the end of 9 weeks, those who used Almee saw a 2.7-point improvement in GAD-7 scores compared with the control group. Participants’ K-BILD scores improved by 4.4 points, and K-BILD psychological scores improved 6.5 points compared with the control group.

“It is very encouraging to see a digital CBT demonstrating a clear clinical benefit for individuals suffering from the mental health burden that accompanies pulmonary fibrosis,” Maureen Horton, MD, principal investigator and professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in the release. “Providing behavior-modifying tools that enhance quality of life represents a new addition to a comprehensive treatment approach for patients suffering from this devastating disease.”