Antifungal drugs can treat asthma: Study
POSTED December 30, 2008 - 19:34 | POSTED BY Jaspreet Kaur
Last edited by Harpreet Bhagrath on December 30, 2008 - 20:55
London, UK, December 30: As per a latest British study, antifungal pills can actually prove to be beneficial for people suffering from asthma.
The study was conducted by David Denning and his colleagues at the University Hospital of South Manchester. The researchers discovered that volunteers who had skin infections caused by fungi showed positive signs of improvement in their asthma, after being administered itraconazole pills.
Itraconazole is an antifungal drug and is marketed as Sporanox by Johnson & Johnson unit Janssen Pharmaceutical.
Earlier it was believed that fungi in the air can actually aggravate asthma. But the latest study proves otherwise. Denning was quoted as saying, “Severe asthma affects between five and ten percent of adult asthmatics and probably 25 to 50 percent of these patients showed allergy to one or more fungi.”
The researchers took into account 58 men and women from four hospitals in Northwest England. All of them had severe asthmatic symptoms. Itraconazole was then compared with an inactive drug in these patients.
The results showed that there was a lot of betterment in the asthmatic symptoms in about 60 percent of the volunteers. The researchers further found that after the volunteers stopped taking these pills, their asthmatic symptoms worsened within a period of four months. These were characterized by running noses, sneezing and hay-fever like symptoms.
Robert Niven of the University of Manchester, who was a part of the study, said, “This pioneering study indicates that fungal allergy is important in some patients with severe asthma, and that oral antifungal therapy is worth trying in some difficult-to-treat patients.”
Asthma is a chronic ailment which can be life-threatening, if not treated on time. The symptoms include wheezing, coughing and difficulty in breathing. Present treatments for the disease include GlaxoSmithkline’s Advair. This drug fights inflammation and eases muscles that otherwise get tightened during an asthma attack.
The latest study has been published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
