Use of inhalers and risk of asthma deaths

Excessive use of reliever inhalers for asthma is linked to a significantly increased risk of dying from the disease, as reported in a recent study.Researchers from Connecticut, USA based their study on a total of 96, 258 individuals in Britain diagnosed with asthma who were entered onto the General Practice Research Database between 1994 and 1998. Of these, 43 had died from asthma, with 35 of the deaths in people aged 50 and above. The team calculated the relative risk of dying from asthma for people using the preventer and reliever drugs, taking into account factors such as the patients' age, sex, weight, smoking habits and frequency of visits to a doctor.They found that between 7-12 prescriptions of short acting beta agonists known as reliever inhalers in the previous year increased the risk of asthma death by 16-fold and 13 or more prescriptions increased it by more than 50-fold. Short acting beta agonists and inhaled steroids tended to be prescribed most frequently to the same patients. In patients who received more than one prescription per month of short acting beta agonists during the previous year, regular use of inhaled steroids was associated with a 60% reduced risk of asthma death. The over-use of short acting reliever drugs known as beta agonists is associated with a higher risk of death from asthma. But regular use of inhaled steroids, known as longer acting preventer drugs, was linked with a decreased risk of asthma death. They discovered that people prescribed more than one reliever inhaler a month cut their risk of death significantly when they also regularly used a preventer inhaler. Despite the variety of respiratory medications available, inhaled steroids constituted the only class of respiratory drug in this study, which was consistently related to a decreased risk of asthma death. Reliever inhalers have their place in the management of asthma but this study clearly demonstrates just how important it is for asthma patients to use both reliever and preventer medicines if they are prescribed by their doctor. Both can have their place in managing mild and severe asthma correctly. It can be concluded that regular use of inhaled steroids is associated with a decreased risk of asthma death, and excessive use of short acting beta agonists (reliever inhalers) is associated with a markedly increased risk of death.