Common Asthma Inhaler Ineffective for Some Children
The world’s most commonly prescribed asthma inhaler could fail to stop asthma attacks as children, and in some cases could make their asthma worse, according to a new British study.
The asthma medication albuterol, also known as salbutamol and ventolin, could prove ineffective for as many as 100,000 British kids who carry a gene prevents the medication from working when used on a daily basis, found a study published October 6 in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
“This is a global question that needs to be addressed,” lead researcher Somnath Mukhopadhyay, of Brighton and Sussex Medical School, told Reuters news service.
Albuterol is found in GlaxoSmithKline’s Advair and Serevent inhalers. Glaxo has said that its studies have found no gene-based variations in responses to the popular blue inhaler medication, but the FDA has cautioned that Advair and Serevent could worsen asthma in some children.
The researchers found that asthmatics between the age of 3 and 22 years old who carried a gene variant known as Arg16 and used an albuterol inhaler on a daily basis, were at 30 percent greater risk of asthma attacks that people without the variant.
The researchers estimated that 100,000 of the 1 million children in the United Kingdom who have asthma carry the Arg16 gene. They said the findings raises questions of whether a genetic test should be developed to determine which children may respond poorly to using albuterol inhalers.
