Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17240

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Publication type: news

White JA
FDA Discourages Use of Some Asthma Drugs After Years of Review
The Wall Street Journal Blog 2010 Feb 18
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/02/18/fda-discourages-use-of-some-asthma-drugs-after-years-of-review/

Full text:

Safety experts advising the FDA have been sending up flares about various asthma drugs for several years. In 2007, a panel said GlaxoSmithKline’s Serevent and Advair should carry a warning about risks to children. In 2008, experts said Serevent and Norvartis’s Foradil shouldn’t be used for asthma any more.

Today, the FDA itself said it had heard enough. The agency said it plans to impose new “safety controls” over those three drugs as well as AstraZeneca’s Symbicort, warning that they should be for the shortest time possible to obtain asthma control and then discontinued. Here’s the FDA announcement and a Q&A from the agency.

The drugs are so-called long-acting beta-agonists that are used by about six million asthma patients. The FDA said single-agent LABAs should be taken along with other inhaled drugs called corticosteroids. Advair and Symbicort come with LABAs and steroids combined.

The medications already carry various warnings but the new wording will be tougher in a bid to cut down on overall use and avoid improper usage that can cause hospitalizations and death, the FDA said. Some 22 million Americans have asthma, a chronic condition marked by narrowing of the airways.

Dow Jones Newswires and Reuters have more details.