Initial Daily Therapy
With so many controller medications to choose from, which should health care providers initially recommend for school-aged children?
Fact
After studying 285 children ages six to fourteen years for forty-eight weeks, researchers at the Childhood Asthma Research and Education Network of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute found that inhaled corticosteroids were the most effective initial daily therapy for children with mild to moderate persistent asthma.
Although a variety of medications are available to help children maintain asthma control, clinical trials directly comparing them had not been conducted. When the study was published in 2007, current recommendations in national and international asthma guidelines were based either on studies of single treatments compared to a placebo in children or on comparison studies in adults.
The researchers compared the effectiveness and safety of three asthma medicines for initial daily therapy for school-aged children:a low-dose inhaled corticosteroid such as fluticasone (Flovent) once a day; a combination of a lower-dose inhaled corticosteroid and an inhaled long-acting beta2-agonist (fluticasone each morning plus salmeterol twice daily); and a leukotriene receptor antagonist (mon-telukast once a day).
These results support the asthma clinical guidelines, issued by the NAEPP in 2007, which recommend inhaled corticosteroids as the preferred initial therapy for children with mild to moderate asthma.
