According to a new review of recently concluded studies comparing inhaled corticosteroids and the medicine cromolyn, asthmatic children and adults can breathe deeper and exercise a better control over their asthma with corticosteroids.
It was remarked by James Guevara, M.D., of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and colleagues that asthmatic patients using steroids also have the unique advantage of scoring considerably higher when it comes to lung function tests. It was also remarked that patients using inhaled corticosteroids use their inhalers often less than those using cromolyn for treating asthma.
From News-Medical.Net:
“To our knowledge, this is the first systematic review comparing the effects of cromolyn to the gold standard, inhaled steroids,” Guevara said.
The review appears 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 consensus still leaves room for cromolyn treatment, according to William Storms, M.D., an allergist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and director of the William Storms Allergy Clinic in Colorado Springs.
“Any expert would agree that inhaled corticosteroids are preferred first-line therapy for treatment of persistent asthma, which requires daily therapy. But we also will agree with the NIH [National Institutes of Health] asthma guidelines, which state that cromolyn and other drugs are alternative therapies,” Storms said.
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.
It was concluded by Guevara and colleagues that inhaled corticosteroids prove to be superior to cromolyn despite severity of asthma. It was also concluded that the experienced results were so much decisive that there is need to warrant any further studies on this matter.
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Tags: asthma, corticosteroids, cromolyn, inhaled corticosteroids, inhalers, sodium cromoglycate, steroids, treating asthma
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