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Excessive use of 'reliever' inhalers linked to increased risk of death from asthma
July 30, 2002Excessive use of 'reliever' inhalers for asthma is linked to a significantly increased risk of dying from the disease, finds research in Thorax.
The researchers based their findings on over 96,000 patients diagnosed with asthma whose details had been entered anonymously onto the General Practice Research Database between 1994 and 1998.
They calculated the relative risk of dying from asthma - risk for someone with taking a particular medication, compared with someone not taking that drug - for beta agonists, the short acting reliever drugs, and inhaled steroids, the long acting 'preventer' drugs.
Forty three people died as a result of their asthma; 35 of the deaths were in people aged 50 and above.
After adjusting the figures to take account of age, sex, weight, smoking, frequency of visits to a family or specialist doctor, and hospital admissions, relative risks for respiratory drugs used fell substantially. This suggests that the risk associated with certain drugs may be attributed to the drugs being used more often by patients with the greatest risk of death, say the authors.
But this was not the case for short acting beta agonists, which were much more strongly associated with the risk of dying from asthma. Between seven and 12 prescriptions of this type of inhaler in the previous year increased the risk of death 16-fold; 13 or more prescriptions increased it by over 50-fold.
The findings were not attributable to patients using inhalers for symptom relief being less likely to use inhalers for symptom prevention. But the researchers found that patients prescribed more than one short acting inhaler a month cut their risk of death by 60 per cent if they regularly used a long acting inhaled steroid inhaler.
British Medical Journal (BMJ)
Asthma Current Events and Asthma News RSSPregnant women with asthma can be more confident about some medicines
Women can usually keep using the same asthma drugs they were using before they got pregnant. Budesonide sprays are the best studied and can be regarded as safe.
Study shows school-based program enables children and adolescents to better manage chronic disease
A new study has found that a school-based asthma education program conducted in the Oakland, California school district was shown to reduce symptoms and increase the number of days that children who suffered from asthma were able to go to school.
Pregnant women with asthma can be more confident about some medicines
Women can usually keep using the same asthma drugs they were using before they got pregnant. Budesonide sprays are the best studied and can be regarded as safe.
Fall babies: Born to wheeze?
It is said that timing is everything, and that certainly appears to be true for autumn infants. Children who are born four months before the height of cold and flu season have a greater risk of developing childhood asthma than children born at any other time of year, according to new research.
Hospital visits for respiratory illnesses spiked during Southern California wildfires
Raging wildfires that engulfed Southern California earlier this decade not only destroyed neighborhoods laying in their path, they also caused significant health problems for many who lived outside the fires' reach.
The miseries of allergies just may help prevent some cancers, study finds
There may be a silver -- and healthy -- lining to the miserable cloud of allergy symptoms: Sneezing, coughing, tearing and itching just may help prevent cancer -- particularly colon, skin, bladder, mouth, throat, uterus and cervix, lung and gastrointestinal tract cancer, according to a new Cornell study.
Is ineffective esophageal motility associated with gastropharyngeal reflux disease?
IEM is associated with an increased acid clearance times in the distal esophagus. Gastropharyngeal reflux causes supraesophageal manifestations such as globus, chronic cough, hoarseness, asthma, chronic sinusitis, or other otorhinolaryngologic diseases.
Flu vaccination rates lag for at-risk adolescents
Influenza vaccination rates for adolescents who suffer from asthma and other illnesses are still far too low, according to a recent study.
Tweens and teens double use of diabetes drugs
America's tweens and teens more than doubled their use of type 2 diabetes medications between 2002 and 2005, with girls between 10 and 14 years of age showing a 166 percent increase. One likely cause: Obesity, which is closely associated with type 2 diabetes.
Researchers Apply Systems Biology and Glycomics to Study Human Inflammatory Diseases
An innovative systems biology approach to understanding the carbohydrate structures in cells is leading to new ways to understand how inflammatory illnesses and cardiovascular disease develop in humans. The work was described in two recent publications by University at Buffalo chemical engineers.
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