New Study Seeks Better Asthma Control for Sufferers
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Are You Suffering From Asthma?
It is very difficult to breathe if you have asthma. An asthmatic attack feels as if you have something heavy weighing down on your chest, preventing you from breathing fully. You gasp for breath and hunger for more air to enter your lungs, but that air fails to reach down to your bronchioles. You feel dizzy, nauseated and dry-mouthed as a result.
Yes it is very difficult to suffer from asthmatic attacks frequently if you are an asthmatic. Asthma is a disease which causes inflammation and obstruction in the airways where air passes from your nose and mouth to your lungs. The airways appear swollen and inflamed due to a triggering allergic process caused by allergens in the air, further narrowing so that less air passes through them. This process in turn causes a wheezing sound during breathing, difficulty of breathing, tightness of the chest and coughing. However, this obstruction is reversible with the use of anti-asthma drugs such as nebulizers and beta-agonist inhalers.
Thus asthma needs to be controlled as much as possible. Uncontrolled asthma can lead to expensive clinic visits and hospital admissions. Worse, it can lead to death. Good asthma control can be achieved if there is careful monitoring of your symptoms and good compliance to maintenance medications.
Good Asthma Control
To obtain good asthma control, you need to watch out for your symptoms. You should watch out for symptoms such as shortness of breath, difficulty of breathing, cough and chest tightness. Once you feel these symptoms, it is best that you go to your doctor so that you can undergo peak flow meter testing or spirometry. This determines the amount of air that enters your lungs. Depending on your symptoms, your doctor is going to adjust the dose of the medications. The two types of medications used to treat asthma are short-term relief medications and long-term control drugs. Short term medications include albuterol inhalation and other bronchodilator drugs. Long term medications include inhaled corticosteroids. Your control of asthma is greatly dependent on the types of medications you use and your compliance with them.
Recommendations for the treatment of asthma involve the use of a combination of long acting bronchodilators to relax and open up the airways and inhaled corticosteroids to lessen inflammation and mucous production in the airways. The problem with these medications is that they should be stopped as soon as possible when there is no need for them. Long term side effects of steroids include infections, diabetes, weight gain, peptic ulcer, hypertension and other problems. Long-term side effects of long-acting beta-agonist drugs include tremors, palpitations, chest pain and other symptoms. This is why these drugs need to be stepped-down when asthma is already well-controlled.
Better Asthma Control for Sufferers
An incoming study from researchers at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are seeking 450 participants from 18 Asthma Clinical Research Centers in the US to make them take part in a study that will establish treatment guidelines for stepping down medications in asthma. The researchers claimed that the present guideline says that patient treatment should be reduced once asthma has been controlled for three months. However, there lies the difficulty in finding out whether asthma is truly controlled or not in a span of three months. Thus, the study seeks out more data that will tell physicians how to find out whether treatment needs to be adjusted or not.
Ideal volunteers for this study will include those who have well-controlled asthma and have no asthma symptoms at the commencement of the trial period and those who have moderate asthma. Volunteers who have moderate asthma will receive combination therapy with fluticasone and salmeterol twice a day for eight weeks. Those who have well-controlled asthma will be randomized to three arms: those who will receive 50%-reduced dose of combination therapy, those who will take fluticasone and those who will take the original un-titrated dose. The results will be analyzed and compared as to what regimen works best for good asthma control.
Are you an asthma sufferer? You should control your asthmatic attacks in the long run. Feel free to browse other articles about asthma in this site.