As the health care reform debate turns to cutting costs and improving treatment outcomes, two professors at Southern Methodist University in Dallas are expanding a study that shows promise for reducing both the expense and suffering associated with chronic asthma.

Mayo Clinic Proceedings published a peer-reviewed comparative effectiveness study performed by HealthCore, Inc. in its August edition. The study demonstrated that asthma patients in general had better clinical outcomes with oral controllers than inhaled corticosteroids.

University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston researchers have found that a single enzyme is apparently critical to most allergen-provoked asthma attacks — and that activity of the enzyme, known as aldose reductase, can be significantly reduced by compounds that have already undergone clinical trials as treatments for complications of diabetes.

Researchers led by Dr. Sem Phan at the University of Michigan discovered that stem cell factor (SCF) plays a critical role in airway remodeling in asthma. This report can be found in the February 2009 issue of The American Journal of Pathology.

Some patients with severe asthma who also have allergic sensitivity to certain fungi enjoy great improvements in their quality of life and on other measures after taking an antifungal drug, according to new research from The University of Manchester in England.

Researchers in the Hunter region are poised to begin the biggest asthma study of its type in the world.

A new study shows that monitoring levels of exhaled nitric oxide in adolescents with asthma and adjusting treatment accordingly does not improve the course of their disease.

In a new consensus statement, the American College of Chest Physicians offers guidance on the diagnosis and treatment of work-related asthma (WRA), a chronic respiratory condition that includes occupational asthma and work-exacerbated asthma (WEA) and affects as many as 25 percent of adults with asthma.

People with asthma who regularly use salmeterol are at a greater risk of non-fatal serious adverse events than those using placebos. This conclusion was arrived at by a team of Cochrane Researchers who drew together data from 26 trials involving 62,630 patients.

AstraZeneca announced that it submitted a supplemental New Drug Application (sNDA) to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for approval of a new indication for SYMBICORT® (budesonide/formoterol fumarate dihydrate) Inhalation Aerosol for the long-term maintenance treatment of asthma in pediatric patients ages 6 to 11 years old.

A presentation that demonstrates breathing exercises designed to help reduce the use of asthma inhalers is today available to the general public for free from the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Asthma and Airways website.

A new open-label study evaluated patient satisfaction with budesonide/formoterol combination therapy and fluticasone/salmeterol combination therapy, as measured by the Asthma Treatment Satisfaction Measure (ATSM).1