The medication used to act on or prevent asthma attacks are either anti-inflammatories or bronchodilators. Time was when adrenaline or epinephrine was the choice of drug to reduce the severity of the asthma attack. However, though this was a great bronchodilator, it had a number of side effects including vomiting, increasing the heart rate and nausea. Today’s drugs are a lot more targeted to the place of discomfort and have a lot less side effects. For some asthma patients, something as simple as an anti-allergy shot will work wonders. However, this happens only if the person is allergic to just one thing like a particular food or pollen.
Asthma medication can come in different delivery forms. They could be tablets, liquids, injectibles or inhalants. The inhaler today has become the most popular way to take asthma medication and it has a lot of advantages. The medication acts directly on the point of discomfort and is absorbed into the area where it is needed most. What’s more, this targeted method means that the medication does not get dissipated all over the body and so there are fewer side effects. Inhalers can contain different medications and some of them include corticosteroids, beta-2 agonists, leukotriene antagonists, aminophylline and leukotriene antagonists.
While adrenaline was a great medicine to control the attacks, today we have a great many medications which act as well without the disturbing side effects. Beta 2 agonists are very popular as inhalant medication because they act swiftly as bronchodilators with hardly any side effects. They are called by this name because they trigger the action of the beta 2 receptors in the muscles of the bronchial wall. This is what relaxes the bronchial walls and with this medication, the results can be seen in a couple of minutes.
The new player in the block is sustained release medication which has a much longer acting time as the effects are slowly released in the airways, giving you comfort for a much longer time. These long acting beta 2 agonists are usually given in conjunction with inhaled corticosteroids because by itself, it could cause some discomfort and side effects. Inhaled corticosteroids include triamcinolone acetonide, dipropionate, flunisolide and budesonide. Though there are a few side effects like hoarseness, this medication can arrest an attack as soon as it begins and can stop any damage to the airways. When corticosteroids are given orally, there can be side effects that are wide ranging like raising the heartbeat, thinning the bones, making the person prone to conditions like diabetes, etc.
Another precaution to watch out for is taking beta blockers or blood pressure medication along with beta 2 agonists as they work in the opposite way from each other on the airways. So if you are on asthma medication, your doctor will probably not give you blood pressure medication unless absolutely necessary.
The new inhalers that are available today are more environment friendly and have stopped using CFC or chlorofluorocarbon which is detrimental to the ozone layer. Instead, they use HFA or hydroflouroalkane as a propellant which could give the user the feeling that not enough has gone in with each puff because it is not as forceful. So when the change is made, doctors will usually advise them about this and ask them not to overdose themselves because they think they have not got enough of the medication inside. Some of these new age inhalers come with counter devices which means you can see that you have used up your dose.
Yet another preventive that is used in asthma treatment is the drug cromolyn sodium which is useful for both children and adults to prevent the secretion of chemicals like histamine in the lungs which cause allergies. While the way it works exactly is not known, it is very helpful in the initial stages of an attack, though not very effective once an attack gets bad. It is more of a preventive than a controlling drug.
In acute attacks, intravenous drugs will have to be administered and though these could have side effects, it is necessary when an asthma attack gets bad. Very often, a combination of methylxanthine and theophylline is given and the levels are monitored so that there are no bad side effects.
An expensive injectibles available today is an IgE antibody called omalizumab and your doctor will be able to give it to you if your asthma is due to the elevation of IgE or immunoglobulin E in your system.
Asthma medication as well as their delivery systems have come a long way today and together with being a lot more effective, they also produce a lot less side effects because of the way they are administered and because the doses are carefully monitored. There is a balance that most medical practitioners try to maintain today between efficacy and ill effects and for most asthma patients, there are great ways to prevent an asthma attack from getting really bad.