According to a new review of recent studies, a combination of airway-opening drugs and inhaled steroids with inflammation-reducing properties works better when it comes to the prevention of severe asthma attacks than a normal dose of steroids alone.

It was proved, however, that higher doses of steroids prove to be as effective as the combination therapy for preventing asthma attacks as per a second review.

From News-Medical.Net:

Asthma patients who used both LABA medication and an inhaled steroid were significantly less likely to have a severe asthma flare-up requiring treatment with an injected or swallowed steroid than patients taking the steroid alone, according to Muireann Ni Chroinin, M.D., of the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital in England, and colleagues.

The reviews appear 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 rate of severe attacks dropped from 27 percent to 22 percent in patients taking the combination therapy. Ni Chroinin and colleagues calculate that 18 patients would need to be treated with LABA for one year to prevent at least one patient from having such an attack.

Jerry Krishnan, M.D., an asthma researcher and assistant professor of medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that he believes that there is a tendency for the initiation of combination therapy with LABAs (long acting beta-2 agonists) and inhaled corticosteroids.

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