Fed: new two in one asthma device

AAP General News (Australia)
08-01-2000
Fed: new two in one asthma device

By Rada Rouse, National Medical Correspondent

BRISBANE, Aug 1 AAP - The first asthma treatment to combine two drugs in the one device
should improve control of the disease for many patients, doctors said today.

The product, Seretide, combining a long-acting reliever with a preventer aerosol steroid,
becomes available on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme from today.

Professor Charles Mitchell, respiratory specialist at Brisbane's Princess Alexandra
Hospital, said the device made medication cheaper and easier for patients.

However, doctors should be careful to ensure patients really needed both drugs before
prescribing it, he said.

"The people that should be switched to it are those already on the two separately," he said.

Seretide combines a corticosteroid, fluticasone propionate, and a long-acting beta-agonist
salmeterol xinafoate.

Patients for whom an inhaled steroid is insufficient to control their disease would
be prescribed one of the long-acting betagonists as well, Prof Mitchell said.

"This device could become the lazy way out for some doctors: it is one of the potential
downsides that people will go on to more medication than they need," Prof Mitchell told
AAP.

Although health authorities had for many years maintained a policy of not allowing
combination therapies, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee was increasingly
agreeing to combinations "where it is logical", he said.

He said a major benefit of the device was that while it controlled symptoms readily,
patients were taking something to dampen down inflammatory activity in the airways at
the same time.

Compliance with medication was a major problem in asthma and other chronic diseases, he said.

General practitioner Dr Ron Tomlins, chairman of the National Asthma Campaign, said
a recent Newspoll survey illustrated the extent of poor control of asthma, with one in
ten people reporting they had sought emergency treatment for it in the last 12 months.

The survey also showed that half the people with asthma who are prescribed preventive
medications only took them when they "feel out of control" rather than using them daily
as directed.

AAP rr/jhm/was/br S

KEYWORD: ASTHMA

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