Inhaled steroids best treatment for children with asthma

For the first time, researchers compared the effectiveness and safety of three different asthma medicines for initial daily therapy for school-aged children with mild to moderate persistent asthma: a low dose inhaled corticosteroid (200 mcg fluticasone a day); a combination of a lower dose inhaled corticosteroid and an inhaled long acting beta2 agonist (100 mcg fluticasone each morning plus 50mcg salmeterol twice daily), and a leukotriene receptor antagonist (montelukast).

Studying 285 children ages 6 – 14 years, researchers in the Childhood Asthma Research and Education Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) found that after 48 weeks, inhaled corticosteroids are the most effective initial daily therapy for children with mild to moderate persistent asthma. They also found no significant adverse growth effects among any of the medicines studied.

“Long-term comparison of 3 controller regimens for mild-moderate persistent childhood asthma: The Pediatric Asthma Controller Trial,” is published in this month's issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (JACI). These results support the current asthma clinical guidelines, which recommend inhaled corticosteroids as the preferred initial therapy for children with mild to moderate asthma.

Media Contact

NHLBI Communications Office EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov

All latest news from the category: Health and Medicine

This subject area encompasses research and studies in the field of human medicine.

Among the wide-ranging list of topics covered here are anesthesiology, anatomy, surgery, human genetics, hygiene and environmental medicine, internal medicine, neurology, pharmacology, physiology, urology and dental medicine.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors