Asthma patients forget doses because of their high cost: study

Sydney: According to a new study, the costs to support prevent many people from taking essential drugs for asthma, calling for urgent interventions to promote discussions between patients and doctors about the cost of drugs to treat the condition. asthma.

The most commonly prescribed preventative treatments for asthma contain inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) which, if taken regularly, reduce the severity of the disease and the number of asthma-related deaths, the researchers said. According to reports, at least one in ten asthma patients live in India and the economic costs badociated with asthma are greater than those of TB and HIV / AIDS combined.

To reach this conclusion, researchers led by the UNSW's George Institute for Global Health and Woolbad Institute of Medical Research interviewed 1,400 asthmatics in Australia and found that half of adults and one-third of children by decreasing or jumping doses of asthma medications to make them last longer.

"We know that preventive inhalers can be extremely effective in controlling symptoms and preventing hospitalization or even the onset of asthma, but our study found that direct costs prevent many of them from occurring. access to life-saving medicines. " , "said Tracey-Lea Laba, senior researcher at the George Institute.

The study found that young adult men were the most likely to underuse asthma treatments. Physicians were largely unaware that direct costs were a major concern for many of their patients, or that some preventionists had lower costs for patients than others.

According to Professor Helen Reddel of Woolbad Institute of UNSW Sydney, badociate professor in the study, asthma is a long-term illness in which people must control inflammation by taking a preventative medication and not just relieve their short-term symptoms from a blue inhaler.

"We need doctors to talk to their patients to emphasize that this Band-Aid approach is not working and can leave them hospitalized or even worse," Reddel said. The results were published in the journal JACI: In Practice.