Make-a-Wish foundation is an organization that helps make wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions come true.

Lalime Wilson, 12, is from New Kensington. He suffers from a severe steroid-dependent asthma. Recently, he and two of his four siblings got trips to Disney World from the foundation. Meanwhile, his sister Idalis suffers from urticaria, a condition that causes respiratory problems, swelling and hive-like welts.

As a way of thanking the foundation, Lalime and his 14-year-old sister entered a card-making contest this summer. The event was sponsored by the Make-a-Wish foundation.

According to the foundation’s spokesperson Dana Antkowiak, there were 30 entries where four winners were chosen. Lalime’s drawing of a snowman was one of them. Children from Scottdale, Irwin and York sent their designs to the Make-a-Wish foundation in Greater Pennsylvania and Southern West Virginia. The contest was exclusive to kids who are beneficiaries of the foundation.

Lalime likes drawing both by hand and by computer. Aside from this, one of his interests is hockey and football. However, according to his father Charles Durand, his asthma has triggered bouts of pneumonia. Severe scar tissues have built up in his lungs. His condition prevented Lalime from actually participating in sports.

From Pittsburgh Live:

Lalime Wilson hopes his holiday card design for the Make-A-Wish Foundation will help the organization that has greatly helped his family.

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RPL554, a new drug for treating asthma, that faced trial at the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) in the Netherlands on more than 60 people in 2008, is now expected to head for human trials during 2009.

The drug, which is hailed by some as nothing short of a miracle drug, may prove beneficial to 1.5 million people in the United States alone suffering from asthma and hay fever. This drug is expected to be available in the market in the coming three to four years pending to the success of initial trials for efficacy and safety.

From News-Medical.Net:

Current treatments for asthma and hay fever sufferers are beta-agonists, which open up the airways, and inhaled steroids, which dampen down the inflammation that causes irritation - they are either taken together or singly.

But they have serious side effects, including possible harm to the cardiovascular system and the ’shakes’ reported by many patients from excess use.

Experts say little progress has been made recently with alternative, effective and practical treatment options for a wide range of people with asthma and hay fever and by combining anti-inflammatory properties and the ability to overcome airway narrowing in a single long-lasting dose via the nose, RPL554 could offer real hope of a significant breakthrough.

Some researchers are of the view that this once-a-day asthma treatment option would act as a potential first-line therapy for curing patients suffering from asthma and hay fever. This will also mean that patients with asthma would now require only a single needle puff from their “lifesaving” inhalers to stop the symptoms.

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If asthmatic people can follow the latest guidelines from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s National Asthma Education and Prevention Program (NAEPP) were presented during the Annual Meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (ACAAI) for controlling asthma, serious symptoms and disability can be avoided to a great extent.

Michael B. Foggs, M.D chief of asthma, allergy and immunology, Advocate Health Care, Chicago, remarked that asthma can be termed as a chronic ailment that can be managed so that associated symptoms can be controlled and severe attacks can be prevented.

From News-Medical.Net:

According to Dr. Foggs, the guidelines put a new emphasis on the physician-patient partnership and ongoing monitoring and management. Specific recommendations include: :

* All patients with asthma should be monitored by a doctor every one to six months, regardless of how severe their condition is and whether they are experiencing symptoms.

* Patient should have a written asthma action plan with instructions for daily treatment and what to do if symptoms become worse. The action plan should be developed by a doctor or nurse, with input from the patient, and shared with all those who interact with the patient such as family members, teachers and coaches.

* Education that takes into account cultural background and literacy should be part of asthma care, and patients should play an active role in managing their condition.

* Asthma treatment based on severity is classified in six steps, rather than four in previous guidelines. A stepwise approach to treatment is still recommended, with medication stepped up or increased when asthma symptoms increase and stepped down, if possible, when asthma is under control.

It was remarked by Carlos Camargo, M.D., DrPH, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, that the guidelines rightly emphasize the difference between acute and chronic asthma management.

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According to new results from a comprehensive childhood asthma study, asthmatic children who benefited from steroid drugs are unable to experience the same results after discontinuing the usage.

The findings of this study came from the Childhood Asthma Management Program (CAMP) clinical trial in which more than 1,000 children were treated for mild-to-moderate asthma. Children were divided into three groups in which one group received twice-daily budesonide and an inhaled corticosteroid medication, the second group received a placebo and the third group received nedocromil (an inhaled non-steroid medication). All the three groups also received albuterol, a bronchodilator, and oral corticosteroids for treating asthma symptoms.

From News-Medical.Net:

Inhaled corticosteroids such as budesonide have been shown to be the most effective form of anti-inflammatory treatment for asthma by controlling symptoms and improving pulmonary function. Results from the original CAMP trial showed that using budesonide twice daily led to fewer hospitalizations and urgent care visits, fewer days in which additional asthma medications were needed and a reduced need for albuterol, a fast-acting drug for relief of acute asthma symptoms. Using nedocromil twice daily reduced urgent care visits and courses of oral steroids for severe symptoms, but did not affect the number of hospitalizations, symptoms or airway responsiveness.

Although the patients had fewer symptoms five years after stopping the daily medication, Strunk cautions that doesn’t mean that they can stop using asthma medications altogether or that their asthma is cured.

In another part of the follow-up study, the involved researchers had a close look at the long-term side effects of the steroid therapy on bone density, fracture rate, and growth.

The study is expected to provide deep insights to the medical fraternity to formulate new plans for treating asthma, which is considered to affect more than 150,000 people in the United States alone.

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Inhaled corticosteroids are far better than sodium cromoglycate for controlling asthma besides enhancing quality of lung function to a considerable extent, as per a recent study.

It was remarked by Dr James Guevara, Department of Pediatrics at the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Medicine in Philadelphia and lead review author of this study that the untamed superiority of inhaled corticosteroids appears to improve with moderately low doses, as compared to low doses.

From News.Bio-Medicine.org:

Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) and sodium cromoglycate (SCG) are both used to help people with asthma. SCG is believed to have a low risk of causing long-term side effects, but despite anxieties relating to routine use of steroids, the use of ICS has steadily increased since the 1990s.

While they are both known to work, there has previously been a debate as to whether one is superior to the other.

By pooling data from randomized controlled trials that directly compared the effects of ICS and SCG the Cochrane Review Authors could assess the relative benefits of each. They considered measures of lung function, asthma control and the use of general healthcare services such as GPs and hospitals.

Their conclusion was that ICS controls asthma better than SCG and that it also leads to improved lung function. They were, however, unable to decide whether there were differences in side-effects as most of the trials ran for too short a time to assess long-term outcomes.

“The superiority of ICS over SCG appears to increase when patients use moderate doses of ICS, compared with when low doses of ICS are used,” says lead Review Author Dr James Guevara, who works in the department of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

It was concluded by Dr Guevara that asthma can be effectively controlled by corticosteroids as compared to sodium cromoglycate and can be prescribed by medical practitioners to their patients fighting with asthma.

It is believed that the finding of this study would prove beneficial to approximately one million asthma patients in the United States alone.

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According to a new review of recent studies focused on comparing inhaled corticosteroids and cromolyn, the two asthma treatment options, inhaled corticosteroids are better than cromolyn.

It was suggested that adults and children with asthma can breathe deeper along with exercising a better control over their asthma. It was concluded during the study that patients on inhaled steroids fared better when it comes to lung function and using less of their “rescue” inhalers, according to James Guevara, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues.

From News-Medical.Net:

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.

“The safety of sodium cromoglycate has been well established, but the effectiveness of sodium cromoglycate in controlling asthma symptoms may be limited,” Guevara said, adding that the lack of effective control might be one reason cromolyn has fallen out of favor compared to inhaled corticosteroids since the 1990s.

Cromolyn’s manufacturer has changed several times during the past two decades, which may also explain why the drug’s popularity has waned, Storms said. The succession of companies “did not spend one dollar in research in the past 20 years to study cromolyn. All of the data are old and most are forgotten,” he said.

It was concluded by Guevara and colleagues that inhaled corticosteroids were far better than cromolyn, irrespective of the severity of the asthma and it was suggested that the obtained results are so decisive that future studies to be focused on such a comparison again are not warranted.

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A new drug, RPL554, which faced trial at the Centre for Human Drug Research (CHDR) in the Netherlands on as many as 60 people in 2008, is expected to be completed by the summer of 2009.

This drug is aimed at treating asthma, which affects more than 1.5 million people in the United States alone, and hay fever. It is believed that the drug could be made available in approximately three to four years if the initial trials for safety and efficacy are found to be successful.

From News-Medical.Net:

Current treatments for asthma and hay fever sufferers are beta-agonists, which open up the airways, and inhaled steroids, which dampen down the inflammation that causes irritation - they are either taken together or singly.

But they have serious side effects, including possible harm to the cardiovascular system and the ’shakes’ reported by many patients from excess use.

Experts say little progress has been made recently with alternative, effective and practical treatment options for a wide range of people with asthma and hay fever and by combining anti-inflammatory properties and the ability to overcome airway narrowing in a single long-lasting dose via the nose, RPL554 could offer real hope of a significant breakthrough.

It is considered by many researchers that this once-a-day treatment option will be regarded as a potential breakthrough when it comes to treating asthma and hay fever. The treatment option would bring relief to asthma sufferers and its use would mean that asthmatic people would be requiring only a single needle puff from their “lifesaving” inhalers to stop the symptoms.

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According to a study that was presented at the American Thoracic Society, there may be occasions when some children may find it difficult to control asthma when they are administered with inhaled corticosteroids, one of the most popular forms of asthma treatment.

The study was quick to highlight that some children may be genetically less responsive to steroids, a fact that was brought into notice by Gregory Sawicki, M.D. of Children’s Hospital in Boston.

From News-Medical.Net:

“The majority of children with mild asthma are less likely to have symptoms as they get older and may not need to be on daily steroids,” Dr. Sawicki said. “The flip side is that if a child has poor asthma control, the parents and doctor need to make sure the child is adhering to their inhaled steroid treatment. But variation in response to inhaled steroids, as other medications, is well described.”

The data comes from the Child Asthma Management Program Continuation Study (CAMPCS), one of the largest groups of children with mild to moderate asthma in the nation who have been followed over 10 years. “This study gives us a good sense of real-world practice in asthma management,” Dr. Sawicki says. “The children’s care is not directed by anyone in the study; it’s an observation of what goes on when the children’s care is directed by their own physicians.”

Dr. Sawicki went on to remark that it had already been communicated in the past that even an extensive use of inhaled steroids may not prove its worth for well-controlled asthma in every adult asthmatic patient. This study is believed to provide a new direction to doctors who have been findings ways to control asthma in their patients with little or no success.

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According to an analysis, asthma patients tend to adhere more to oral controller medications compared to inhaled corticosteroids.

Only 70% of asthmatics report using their inhaled corticosteroid regularly when not having asthma symptoms. According to the study, several reasons were given for non-compliance to inhaled corticosteroid maintenance treatment.

One is the anxiety of potential side effects brought about by inhaled corticosteroids. Another reason cited was the lack of confidence to use inhaled corticosteroid properly. The last reason cited was the difficulty to follow their inhaled corticosteroid treatment plan.

According to the authors, the most effective method of asthma treatment is a combination of inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta agonists.

Furthermore, doctors should consider inhaled corticosteroids and long acting beta agonists as their first choice of treatment for asthma patients, when switching from a single drug therapy to a combination therapy. This was even recommended by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program in 2002 and 2007.

The authors concluded that when patients could not comply with their inhaled corticosteroid treatment plan, the next therapy of choice is a leukotriene modifier.

Leukotriene modifiers help prevent the release of leukotrienes, fatty compounds produced by the immune system which causes inflammation in asthma and bronchitis and causes airways to constrict.

From Medpage Today:

When adherence was not an issue, inhaled corticosteroids reduced the risk of emergency department visits and hospitalization and were associated with lower treatment costs, Hiangkat Tan, of HealthCore in Wilmington, Del., and colleagues reported in the August issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

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A cataract is a clouding that develops in the eye, particularly in the crystalline lens or in its envelope. It varies in degree from being slight opaque to being completely opaque. Cataracts can completely obstruct the passage of light.

Symptoms include blurring of vision, glare sensitivity, poor night vision, double visions, and a yellowing of colors similar to looking through a frosted window. Cataract is not caused by eye overuse, nor does it spread from one eye to another. It is not a film coating the eye surface.

The most common type of cataract is age-related. This type is called senile cataract. However, studies have shown a link between the use of steroids and the formation of cataracts.

In one study conducted in England and Wales, they found that 11.5% of the participants were on inhaled steroids for the treatment of their asthma condition. Only 7.5% were found to have no symptoms of cataract.

The study also showed an increase in incidence among patients who were taking higher doses of inhaled steroids. Those who were taking the lowest daily dose of 400 mcg were found to have little or no risk at all. Those who were on 1,600 mcg per day dose have 70% greater incidence of cataract formation. The risk also increases with prolonged use of inhaled steroids.

From Web MD:

Older adults who use inhaled steroids to manage their asthma may be slightly more likely to develop cataracts than others, a new study suggests.

Researchers say previous research has shown that steroids that are taken as pills or delivered intravenously (by vein) increase the risk of cataracts, or clouding of the clear lens that covers the eye. But this is the first study to examine whether inhaled steroids also carry a risk of cataracts.

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