A Single Inhaler for Your Asthma

Most asthma patients use their maintenance asthma inhaler, most commonly an inhaled steroid like Pulmicort or Flovent, and a separate rescue inhaler like Albuterol when your symptoms worsen. But what if you only needed one asthma inhaler?

According to a study released by the Cochrane Collaboration, an independent non-profit organization that reviews and evaluates research supporting health care interventions by preforming systematic reviews, a single asthma inhaler may be possible to control your asthma. A systematic review is a particular type of study where the researchers identify all of the current research on a topic and synthesize the results and make recommendations based on the results of the multiple different trials.

This review compared a standard therapy of an inhaled corticosteroid with a separate rescue inhaler with a single inhaler — one inhalation of budesonide/formoterol twice daily, and as needed for worsening symptoms.

While the single inhaler therapy did not reduce the number of asthma exacerbations requiring hospitalization, fewer adult patients on the single inhaler therapy had asthma exacerbations that needed oral corticosteroids like Prednisone.

Christopher Cates, M.D., the lead author from the Community Health Sciences of St. George’s at the University of London, stated in a press release that “one attraction of the combined inhalers is that the inhaled corticosteroid is automatically taken with the beta-agonist, which does relieve symptoms. Single-inhaler therapy takes this one stage further, as the inhaled corticosteroid is automatically increased, with the beta-agonist, if the asthma symptoms worsen. This approach shows clear advantages in comparison to taking inhaled corticosteroids alone, but is less convincing when compared to current best practice.”

While this review is promising, further studies are needed before making this a regular maintenance therapy for patients with asthma.

Source: Cates CJ, Lasserson TJ. Combination of formoterol and budesonide as single inhaler therapy versus inhaled corticosteroid maintenance and a separate reliever inhaler, or current best practice. The Cocrane Collaboration. Accessed April 15, 2009.