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Inhaled corticosteroids can treat symptoms of asthma

Inhaled corticosteroids can treat symptoms of asthma Asthmatic children and adults can exercise a better control over asthma and breathe deeper, as per a new review of recently concluded studies comparing inhaled corticosteroids and the medicine cromolyn.

James Guevara, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues were of the view that patients suffering from asthma and treated with steroids enjoy an advantage of scoring higher in lung function tests. It was remarked that the use of inhaled corticosteroids help asthmatic patients to make lesser use of inhalers than patients who makes use of cromolyn.

From News-Medical.Net:

“To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review comparing the effects of cromolyn to the gold standard, inhaled steroids,” Guevara said.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.

The consensus still leaves room for cromolyn treatment, according to William Storms, M.D., an allergist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and director of the William Storms Allergy Clinic in Colorado Springs.

“Any expert would agree that inhaled corticosteroids are preferred first-line therapy for treatment of persistent asthma, which requires daily therapy. But we also will agree with the NIH [National Institutes of Health] asthma guidelines, which state that cromolyn and other drugs are alternative therapies,” Storms said.

Cromolyn, or sodium cromoglycate, and inhaled corticosteroids both block the action of certain inflammatory cells in the lungs. Physicians recommend both types of medication for persistent asthma, but individual studies disagree about which type of medication works best, the reviewers found.

Guevara and colleagues further remarked that inhaled corticosteroids are any day better than cromolyn irrespective of the severity level of asthma and said that the obtained results are so decisive that there is need to warrant any further studies on this matter.