WARNING OVER ASTHMA INHALERS

Asthma sufferers have been warned their inhalers could kill them.

But regular use of inhaled steroids, known as longer acting preventer drugs, was linked with a decreased risk of asthma death.

Researchers discovered that people prescribed more than one reliever inhaler a month cut their risk of death by 60% if they also regularly used a preventer inhaler.

Patients

The study was based on more than 96,000 asthma patients in the UK who were entered onto the General Practice Research Database between 1994 and 1998.

Of these, 43 had died from asthma, with 35 of the deaths in people aged 50 and above.

The research team from Connecticut, USA, calculated the relative risk of dying from asthma for people using the preventer and reliever drugs.

Factors including the patients' age, sex, weight, smoking habits and frequency of GP visits were taken into consideration.

Prescriptions

They found that between seven and 12 prescriptions of reliever inhalers in the previous year increased the risk 16-fold.

Thirteen or more prescriptions increased it by more than 50-fold.

Writing in the journal Thorax, the authors said: "Despite the variety of respiratory medications available, inhaled steroids constituted the only class of respiratory drug in this study which was consistently related to a decreased risk of asthma death."

The British Thoracic Society said that reliever inhalers have their place in the management of asthma.