According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, ‘approximately 25 million people in the U.S. have asthma. This equals about 1 in 13 people.’ This number includes adults and children, with around 20 million around age 18 or older.
A new clinical study shows that people worldwide that have been using a combination of two drugs have managed to dramatically lower their chances of having an acute asthma attack.
The study results, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, have found that with the combination of albuterol – which is the medicine that gives relief from an asthma attack ‘by relaxing the smooth muscles and is used for immediate asthma relief’ – alongside corticosteroid taken in an inhaler together, helps to lessen the number of sudden episodes of shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing in patients that tends to cause hospitalizations, or in worse cases, death.
Professor of medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and study author, Reynold Panettieri, Jr., said “This represents a paradigm shift in the treatment of asthma. We see this combination treatment, which is the first of its kind, as becoming part of standard therapy.”
In the third phase of the clinical study, which has been named MANDALA, included over 3,000 asthma patients from 295 sites all throughout the U.S., South America, and Europe, was created to evaluate the ‘safety and efficacy of a combination of albuterol and budesonide (both AstraZeneca PLC drugs)’ to be used as a treatment for patients dealing with modest to severe asthma.
The medicine albuterol is considering ‘a short-acting beta 2-agonist that works by attaching to miniscule proteins called beta receptors in the airways’ that relax the muscles there. In addition, considered a corticosteroid, the budesonide also lessens the irritation and swelling in the airways.
While the standard asthma “maintenance” treatment usually consists of an inhalant that puts two drugs together, one of which is a long-acting beta 2-agonist, while the other is a corticosteroid. Then when a patient has an asthma attack, they normally use a rescue medicine like albuterol. Patients are also usually prescribed certain doses of oral steroids as well.
Doctors have been hoping to prescribe less oral steroids because they tend to have powerful side effects.
The trial, which was divided into three groups, had lots of patients that were already on daily asthma maintenance therapy. The participants of each group were provided with one of three different rescue therapies to use in case they have an asthma attack. These included either a combination of albuterol and a high dose of budesonide or a lower dose of budesonide. Meanwhile, the control group was only given albuterol.
The study found that patients not only had improved lung function, but they also had less asthma attacks.
The scientists also found that the albuterol that had the higher dose of budesonide also helped reduce the risk of an asthma attack by at least 27 percent in the short time, while also reducing asthma attacks by 24 percent annually. Moreover, this medicine combination helped lessen the use corticosteroids, which tend to have adverse side effects of at least 33 percent.
Panettieri, who is also the director of the Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine and Science, who also conducts research at the Child Health Institute of New Jersey, explains, “With this new inhaler that delivers more inhaled steroids every time patients take the rescue therapy, they’re getting more at a time when they’re having a flare-up and when they need it.”
He added, “We showed that, beyond decreasing their exacerbations, it decreased their need for oral steroids after a flare-up.”
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