Q: I’m an asthma sufferer who was diagnosed after developing thyroid disease. I have allergy-induced asthma, and I am allergic to albuterol. My physicians have me take prednisone when I have an attack. Are there any other options for me? I always suffer when I take the steroid.
Dr. Anna Feldweg
A: Yes, there are other options for you. Before I discuss them, let’s just review the effects of the albuterol you mentioned. Albuterol is a symptom reliever. It relaxes and opens the airways and works within a few minutes to relieve chest tightness and that dry asthma cough. Albuterol does not treat the inflammation in the lung linings that actually causes the symptoms of asthma, and it does not help prevent symptoms. If you can’t tolerate albuterol for some reason, then there are several other medications that you could try.
If people have asthma symptoms more than a couple of times a week, or a couple of nights a month, then they should receive a “controller medication.” The recommended type to start with is a steroid inhaler (also called inhaled corticosteroid or inhaled glucocorticoid). Specific medications in this group include (in no particular order) Flovent, Pulmicort, QVAR, Asmanex, and many others, both brand-name and generic. These are medicines that are similar to prednisone, but the dose is much lower than prednisone taken by mouth, and the side effects are dramatically reduced. Inhaled corticosteroids work because the medicine is delivered directly to the lung.
Click Here To Read More From Dr. Anna Feldweg At everydayHealth.com
Q: I’m an asthma sufferer who was diagnosed after developing thyroid disease. I have allergy-induced asthma, and I am allergic to albuterol. My physicians have me take prednisone when I have an attack. Are there any other options for me? I always suffer when I take the steroid.
Dr. Anna Feldweg
A: Yes, there are other options for you. Before I discuss them, let’s just review the effects of the albuterol you mentioned. Albuterol is a symptom reliever. It relaxes and opens the airways and works within a few minutes to relieve chest tightness and that dry asthma cough. Albuterol does not treat the inflammation in the lung linings that actually causes the symptoms of asthma, and it does not help prevent symptoms. If you can’t tolerate albuterol for some reason, then there are several other medications that you could try.
If people have asthma symptoms more than a couple of times a week, or a couple of nights a month, then they should receive a “controller medication.” The recommended type to start with is a steroid inhaler (also called inhaled corticosteroid or inhaled glucocorticoid). Specific medications in this group include (in no particular order) Flovent, Pulmicort, QVAR, Asmanex, and many others, both brand-name and generic. These are medicines that are similar to prednisone, but the dose is much lower than prednisone taken by mouth, and the side effects are dramatically reduced. Inhaled corticosteroids work because the medicine is delivered directly to the lung.
Click Here To Read More From Dr. Anna Feldweg At everydayHealth.com