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Thursday, July 14, 2005Advair and Serevent already carry warnings about a study that showed a small but significant increase in deaths among people who added the drugs to their usual asthma treatment: 13 deaths in 13,176 patients who took the drugs, versus 3 in 13,179 who took placebos. Foradil was not part of the study and does not carry such a warning. I've never been too impressed with Serevent, and I've never used Foradil, but Advair - which is a combination of Serevent and an inhaled steroid - has been a lifesaver for many of my asthma and emphysema patients. It's the only inhaler in recent memory that has actually made a difference in the number of times my asthmatic patients have to use their rescue inhaler. It's also reduced the number of emergency room visits and hospitalizations for some of them. Even, oddly enough, those who were taking inhaled steroids and Serevent separately before switching to the combined product. Maybe it's a compliance issue, or maybe there really is some physiological benefit to delivering the two drugs simultaneously, but the outcomes are dramatically better than administering Serevent and inhaled steroids separately. Unfortunately, the FDA appears to have lumped them all together in the same category without considering that there may be synergistic difference between the them. Thankfully, the panel decided the drugs' benefits outweighed their harm. It would be much more difficult to treat asthma without Advair in the arsenal. posted by Sydney on 7/14/2005 07:17:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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