MedWire News: More than 40% of US adults with asthma do not have their disease under good control, survey results suggest.

“Achieving and maintaining asthma control is the goal of current national and international treatment guidelines,” explain Richard Stanford (GlaxoSmithKline, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA) and team.

But they add: “Recent asthma surveillance studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that the burden of asthma remains high with a high cost burden. In 2004, asthma was responsible for 1.8 million emergency department visits and 497,000 hospitalizations.”

To assess current levels of asthma control in the USA, the researchers sent a brief, four-page survey regarding asthma and associated symptoms to a nationally representative sample of 134,401 households, of which 81,505 responded.

In total, 10,139 adults in these households reported a history of asthma and completed the Asthma Control Test (ACT) – a brief questionnaire recommended to assess asthma control as detailed in the 2007 National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute asthma guidelines. A score of more than 19 on the ACT indicates well-controlled asthma (WCA) while a score of 19 or below indicates not well-controlled asthma (NWCA).

The researchers found that 41% of the respondents with asthma scored 19 or less on the ACT, including 39% of respondents who were using albuterol as their only asthma medication.

Furthermore, 58% of respondents with NWCA had experienced at least one asthma-related exacerbation, as indicated by the use of oral corticosteroids, asthma-related emergency department visits, or asthma-related hospitalization, in the previous year compared with 24% of those with WCA.

Stanford and team conclude in the journal Allergy and Asthma Proceedings: “The results of the present national survey reveal a high level of uncontrolled asthma in a general population of subjects with self-reported asthma.”

“In addition, subjects using albuterol monotherapy, who would be expected to have mild asthma and thus be well controlled, had a similar high prevalence of NWCA.”

They add: “These results indicate that uncontrolled asthma and inadequate use of asthma controller medicines is a continuing problem.”

MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a trading division of Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2009

Free abstract