Corticosteroid medication prescribed for asthma sufferers may not actually be helping patients at all. The medication works as an anti-inflammatory to reduce the inflammation of the airways that the chronic condition causes. However, as there are different types and severity of asthma, the inhaled steroids don’t work on every single patient.
Those are the findings of a large American study, which involved almost 1,000 asthma sufferers in nine separate clinical trials over specific periods of time. The study concluded that anti-inflammatory steroids did not help patients with a specific form of the condition, known as non-eosinophilic asthma.
This is because the eosinophils, or white blood cells, that cause inflammation in the airways were not present in the mucus samples taken from the lungs of participants in the study. The researchers said this demonstrated that, in those patients, there was a different cause for their asthma.
Those patients did respond positively to albuterol, a bronchodilator that relaxes the muscles around inflamed airways and helps patients breathe more easily. Albuterol is known as a reliever drug and is generally prescribed to be taken alongside daily oral and inhaled steroids for asthma sufferers.
The results of the study, which was sponsored by the US National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, were published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Asthma affects around 5 million in the UK with rising numbers of people diagnosed with the condition every year. The definitive cause of asthma is not yet known but environmental factors are thought to be key while recent research, such as the US study, also links the rise in obesity to the growing numbers of asthma sufferers, with those who are overweight more likely to develop the condition in later life.
The American researchers reported that those with the less severe form of the condition, non-eosinophilic asthma, were more overweight compared to those with eosinphilic asthma, a more severe form of the disease. The research also confirmed that those with the less severe non-eosinphilic asthma tended also to be older when their condition was first diagnosed.
With more research into the different types of asthma required, conventional treatments involving daily inhaled steroids and non-steroid reliever medication is still the favoured route for GPs. However, patients who feel they are getting no benefits from their medication should ask their doctor if they could try a different drug.
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