Health News

Many Asthma Deaths Can Easily Be Prevented

Aug. 2, 2000 -- The word "steroids" is often scary to patients with asthma, but a new study shows that in addition to improving breathing, inhaled steroids actually can prevent deaths from asthma. The researchers say that when used at a low dose, these medications can prevent many needless deaths without causing any significant side effects.

"We have a disease where there are way too many unnecessary deaths -- in the U.S. alone almost 6,000 a year -- across all age groups," Samy Suissa, PhD, tells WebMD. "It is a consensus that many of these are avoidable. What we have here in this study is that maybe thousands of these unnecessary deaths can be avoided with the use of these drugs ... the best news is that the drugs save lives with even low doses." Suissa is a professor of biostatics and epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Suissa and colleagues looked at medical information from almost 31,000 people between the ages of 5 and 44 who had been on asthma medications. The researchers found that deaths from asthma were linked to how consistently and frequently the inhaled steroids were used.

Although heavily prescribed, the steroids are often ignored, either because patients misunderstand the side effect risks, or they don't feel an immediate benefit, like they might feel from the bronchodilators. Bronchodilators are often used to open up airways quickly during asthma attacks, but steroids work consistently, though less noticeably, at lowering the inflammation in the lungs caused by asthma. That inflammation can lead to mucus buildup, which in turn blocks airways and sometimes leads to death.

Most of the people in this study were taking a low dose of a steroid known as beclomethasone, which comes in a variety of brand names, such as Beclovent and Vanceril. Other examples of inhaled steroids are Flovent and Azmacort.

The researchers found that for every additional canister of inhaled steroids that a person used during the year, the chance of dying from asthma decreased by 21%. And they found an even bigger effect when they looked at inhaled steroid use during the last six months -- there was a 54% decrease in deaths for each additional canister used. The results are published in the Aug. 3 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

"The take-home lesson is that persistent use of low dose steroids is beneficial," Gregory Redding, MD, tells WebMD. Redding, who was not involved in the study, is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and chief of the pulmonary division at Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center in Seattle.

The study also shows the importance of not stopping inhaled steroid use without first discussing it with your doctor. When patients stopped using their inhaled steroids, the death rate increased significantly during the first three months and then leveled off. Redding points out that the risk of dying was almost five times greater in those who recently had stopped using their medication.