By Charlene Laino
WebMD Health News
March 1, 2010 (New Orleans) -- A leading panel of asthma experts today criticized a new FDA ruling that long-acting asthma drugs should be used only for the shortest period of time required to achieve control of asthma symptoms and then discontinued.
The panel agreed with the FDA warning that the long-acting drugs Serevent and Foradil should never be used alone, but rather in combination with other asthma-control medications called inhaled steroids.
But the move to limit use of Serevent and Foradil as well as the combination drugs Advair and Symbicort puts patients at risk of full-blown, deadly asthma attacks, says William Busse, MD, chair of the department of medicine at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health in Madison.
All of the drugs are a member of a class of drugs called long-acting beta agonists (LABAs), which the FDA cautions can provoke a sudden, fatal asthma attack.
"But the risk to a patients from LABAs is very remote," Busse tells WebMD.
The risk of having a deadly attack if you suddenly stop taking the LABA medication once control is achieved is much greater, he says.
Busse was chair of the panel that wrote the asthma bible that most doctors follow -- the 2007 National Asthma Education and Prevention Program Expert Panel Report 3: Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Asthma.
"The fact that the [FDA ruling] runs counter to the asthma guidelines without any new information being introduced is of real concern," he says.Read Full Article from WebMD.com
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