Asthma Inhalers Prevent Deaths

B O S T O N, Aug. 2 -- Is your asthma inhaler buried at the bottom of your medicine cabinet?

That could put you at jeopardy, say Canadian researchers, who are reporting today in the New England Journal of Medicine that using an asthma inhaler could reduce your chances of dying of an asthma attack.

But despite these important findings, asthma experts say many doctors and patients are still reluctant to use inhalers faithfully.

Over 17 million Americans, including nearly 5 million children, suffer from asthma, a chronic inflammation of the airways that causes wheezing, coughing, breathlessness — ;and 14 deaths a day in the U.S.

The number of asthma cases has doubled since 1980, leading the Department of Health and Human Services to declare asthma “an epidemic” in its Action Against Asthma report issued this May.

Despite strong recommendations from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for use of these long-term medications to prevent attacks, many patients are reluctant to use asthma inhalers containing high doses of corticosteroids because they have been linked to stunting growth in children, and causing cataracts, glaucoma and osteoporosis in adults.

Steroid-Phobia?

“There’s steroid-phobia here in the U.S. amongst primary care physicians and pediatricians,” says Dr. H. William Kelly, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico, who served on the NIH’s expert panel on asthma. “Despite our best efforts, there’s a significant lack of use of cortiosteroids, compared to other countries. We don’t use them nearly enough.”

There is a persistent misconception that inhaled steroids cause the same negative side effects of an earlier, oral or injectable form of the drug, such as diabetes and high blood pressure, explains Dr. Neil Schachter, professor of medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center.

“Doctors are loathe to recommend them because they have the old image of the drug,” Schachter says. “Some studies have shown only 30 percent of general physicians prescribe these medications correctly.”