More steroids may not help asthma

INCREasING the dose of inhaled steroids does not effectively prevent severe flare-ups in children with asthma, say U.s. scientists. a temporarily increased dose is sometimes used as a treatment for asthma.

In a new study, researchers at the Wisconsin school of Medicine and Public Health treated 254 children aged five to 11 with mild-to-moderate asthma for a year with low-dose inhaled corticosteroids twice daily, increasing the dose to five times the standard in half of them at the first signs of flare-ups.

The other group stayed on the low dose. although the children in the high-dose group had 14 per cent more exposure to inhaled steroids than the low-dose group, they didn’t have fewer severe flare-ups.