The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, involved 1,000 children with mild to moderate asthma over two years. It aimed to discover if inhaled steroids, known to have an effect on a child’s growth when first prescribed, had an impact on their height in the long term.
A third of the children who took part were prescribed the inhaled steroid budesonide and at the end of the treatment period, were found to be half an inch shorter on average than the rest of the children in the study who had been prescribed either a non-steroid drug or a placebo. All three groups of children also took the non-steroid drug albuterol, a bronchodilator used with the steroids to provide relief from inflammation of the airways.
While the effect of the steroids on growth was first seen in childhood, the study followed participants into adulthood where it appeared that the difference in height did not get worse.
Researchers from the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in Boston, carried out the study and presented their findings at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress in Vienna in 2012.
They concluded that children with mild to moderate asthma who taken inhaled steroids may end up shorter than their peers. However, balanced against those findings is the significant weight of evidence that inhaled steroids are the most effective treatment for asthma in children.
To minimise the risk of stunted growth in those children taking the medication, it has been suggested that the dosage of steroid prescribed should be reduced to the lowest level that still provides effective treatment.