Review of LABA medications, inhaled steroids, and asthma
by admin ~ February 20th, 2010.
A combination therapy involving airway opening drug and inhaled steroids having inflammation-minimizing characteristics rather than a normal steroid dose is better in order to prevent severe asthma attacks, as per a review of studies.
This study noted that high doses of steroids may do the trick for preventing the occurrence of asthma attacks.
From News-Medical.Net:
Asthma patients who used both LABA medication and an inhaled steroid were significantly less likely to have a severe asthma flare-up requiring treatment with an injected or swallowed steroid than patients taking the steroid alone, according to Muireann Ni Chroinin, M.D., of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in England, and colleagues.
The reviews appear in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.
The rate of severe attacks dropped from 27 percent to 22 percent in patients taking the combination therapy. Ni Chroinin and colleagues calculate that 18 patients would need to be treated with LABA for one year to prevent at least one patient from having such an attack.
Jerry Krishnan, M.D., an asthma researcher and assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said that practitioners have a habit of initiating combination therapy with LABAs (long acting beta-2 agonists) and inhaled corticosteroids among practitioners at an early stage and that must be analyzed.
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