A team of researchers at the Ajou University School of Medicine conducted a study on inhaled corticosteroid (ICS)-formoterol treatments and found that they can effectively prevent the occurrence of serious asthmatic exacerbations.
The study cohort included 743 adult asthma patients who received asthma treatment for 13 years from 2008 to 2021. The patients were divided into two groups where group A used maintenance and relief treatment MART (ICS–formoterol) and group B used ICS-LABA long-acting beta-2 agonist plus as-needed short-acting beta-2 agonist (SABA).
Asthma therapies are either used as maintenance treatments which are used daily even when there are no asthma symptoms or relief treatments to alleviate asthma symptoms.
As a result of the study, only 5.2 percent of group A experienced severe asthma exacerbation during the observation period, while group B more than doubled this figure to 13.5 percent.
This confirmed that inhalation steroid-formoterol preparation treatment can effectively reduce the occurrence of serious asthma exacerbation.
The result is consistent with recent large-scale clinical trials showing that adult asthma patients using inhaled steroid-formoterol as a remedy experience less asthma exacerbation without increased side effects. Furthermore, the global initiative for asthma (GINA) guideline also recommends inhaled steroid-formoterol usage for asthmatics.
Although previous studies mainly targeted mild and moderate asthma patients, this study used large-scale data from actual patients, including a large number of moderate and severe asthma patients in Korea.
Additionally, the researchers confirmed that the use of systemic steroids was significantly lower in patients in group A.
Professor Park said, "This study is a long-term follow-up of severe asthma patients in Korea, for more than 10 years, and is expected to act as an important guideline for efficient treatment of asthma patients in clinical practice as the prevalence of asthma in Korea is steadily rising."
This study was published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in October 2022.