'Very simple intervention' improves asthma care among Black, Hispanic patients
When it comes to asthma, Black and Hispanic/Latinx patients have more than twice as many emergency room visits and deaths as White patients. Many efforts to fix this issue, however, have been unsuccessful. In a new study of 1,201 Black and Hispanic/Latinx adults with moderate to severe asthma, researchers tested whether adding a new steroid asthma inhaler to a patient’s usual asthma medication would lead to fewer hospital visits and less serious symptoms than their usual medications alone. All patients in the study were randomly assigned to either the usual treatment group or the combination treatment group and were followed for 15 months. Each month participants completed the Asthma Control Test (ACT) survey, which measures how much a patient’s asthma symptoms impact their life. A high ACT score means that the patient’s asthma symptoms don’t have a serious effect on their daily life and activities. At the end of the study, researchers found that patients who used the steroid inhaler along with their usual asthma medication had more control over their asthma symptoms, more than 3 fewer missed days of work, and fewer refills of their standard inhaler than those who only used their usual medication. Researchers hope that this new combination treatment with a steroid inhaler will become widely used and help reduce the burden of serious asthma symptoms experienced disproportionately by Black and Hispanic/Latinx patients.
Article Citation:
Gawel, R. (2022, February 27). ‘very simple intervention’ improves asthma care among black, Hispanic patients. Healio. Retrieved March 4, 2022, from https://www.healio.com/news/allergy-asthma/20220227/very-simple-intervention-improves-asthma-care-among-black-hispanic-patients
Study Citation:
Israel, E., Cardet, J. C., Carroll, J. K., Fuhlbrigge, A. L., She, L., Rockhold, F. W., Maher, N. E., Fagan, M., Forth, V. E., Yawn, B. P., Arias Hernandez, P., Kruse, J. M., Manning, B. K., Rodriguez-Louis, J., Shields, J. B., Ericson, B., Colon-Moya, A. D., Madison, S., Coyne-Beasley, T., Hammer, G. M., … Pace, W. D. (2022). Reliever-Triggered Inhaled Glucocorticoid in Black and Latinx Adults with Asthma. The New England journal of medicine, 10.1056/NEJMoa2118813. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa2118813
