Asthma Healing

Asthma is an ongoing condition that interferes with breathing by preventing air from flowing freely in and out of the lungs. When your child has asthma, his or her airways are inflamed. As a result, the airways are especially sensitive and easily irritated. When irritated by a trigger, airways swell up and the muscles around them constrict, blocking the flow of oxygen to the lungs, making it hard to breathe.

HE stashes the regulation firefighter's helmet issued by his employer, the Fire Department of the City of New York, at home because his wife "likes to look at it" and because, being a pulmonary specialist who fights fires in the lungs, not in the neighborhoods, he does his best work when he isn't wearing it.

Inhalers are an effective treatment for asthma and other respiratory diseases, but they can have adverse side effects. The conclusions of studies on these effects apparently depend in part on who pays for the study.

(Reuters) -- Federal regulatory advisers on Wednesday recommended strengthening safety warnings on GlaxoSmithKline's asthma drug Serevent amid reports of deaths in children taking the treatment.

GWENDOLYN STRETCH, the medical director at the Elsie Owens North Brookhaven Health Center, in Coram, had a lot to do during the 20-minute appointment with her next patient. After examining Nelia McPherson, 44, a chronic asthma patient from East Patchogue, Dr. Stretch renewed prescriptions and discussed some of the risks that could trigger an asthma attack — including rugs and plastic covers on mattresses. Atop the doctor’s priority list was to encourage her patient to stop smoking.

Asthma control is about more than just treating symptoms. It’s about managing your asthma so you have few or no symptoms in the first place.

By ERIC NAGOURNEY

Could indoor pools be contributing to the increase in asthma among children?

By PHILIP M. BOFFEY, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES

Leading experts and professional groups are challenging the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the nonprescription use of an inhaler drug for asthma.

LEAD: The nation's death rate from asthma has increased by more than 30 percent in seven years, and nearly 10 million Americans are now affected by the disease, Federal health officials say.

Experimental medicines that attack allergies at their source open a new strategy for preventing asthma and hay fever, which afflict a quarter of all Americans, researchers say.

By GINA KOLATA

Although doctors who treat asthma patients have long worried that the overuse of medication might be making their patients worse, a small new study suggests that the most common problem in controlling the disease may be that doctors are not aggressive enough in their treatments.

A pharmaceutical company has advised Federal regulatory officials of a new report that suggests that excessive use of the most widely prescribed asthma drugs, beta-2 agonists, may increase the risk of fatal asthma attacks.

In the wake of a new study that found that the overuse of asthma drugs might be hazardous, physicians are urging patients not to stop using them but to use them correctly.

By BARRY MEIER

Behind a new study questioning the safety of some asthma drugs used by millions of Americans lies a curious series of events, linking science and business, that stretch from New Zealand to Germany to North America.

A new asthma inhalant drug works better at preventing attacks and lasts longer than a widely used medication, researchers say.

The maker of a new, long-acting asthma drug has issued a warning after doctors reported that the death of some asthma sufferers might be attributable to their improper use of it.

Abbott Laboratories received approval from a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel to sell a new class of asthma drug.

Copley Pharmaceutical Inc. has agreed to settle a shareholder lawsuit stemming from its recall of an asthma drug that may have caused numerous deaths and injuries.

BOLTS of thunder and lightning struck. Wind gusts scattered grass pollen over a wide area. Many people immediately began wheezing and having difficulty breathing from asthmatic attacks. Emergency rooms were swamped with 10 times the usual number of asthmatics. For nearly half the victims, it was the first asthmatic attack in their lives. Thirty hours later, it had turned into the largest epidemic of asthma following a thunderstorm.