Advair 250/50 question?OK maybe I'm just being paranoid. But I was prescribed advair. And I was reading the info about it and it kinda scared the crap outta me. It says, "Advair contains salmeterol which may increase the chance of asthma-related deaths." What does this mean to you? I take it as it just might not work at preventing an asthma attack. But my husband thinks it means the inhalor itself could cause something and kill you. Does anyone have any good ideas? Thanx!
-softballchickie87
I always took it to mean that when and if you have an asthma attack while taking that medication, the asthma attack can become harder to get under control increasing the chances that one can die from asthma. From what I've tried to learn for myself, salmeterol is a medicine that doctors normally wait to use until a patient is out of options and a controller medication is no longer enough and if i remember right salmeterol is the long acting bronchodilator. Advair is a combination of two medications so there is a lower amount of salmeterol given than salmeterol given alone that's why I've always been told that controller corticosteroids should be prescribed first and then if they don't work you move on to things like advair or controller medicines and salmeterol. I believe since salmeterol is a long acting bronchodilator it causes fast acting inhalers like albuterol to become less effective. If you have ever taken too much albuterol at one time during an asthma attack, you will have noticed that it actually has almost the opposite effect of what it is supposed to do for you and has no effect on helping the asthma attack. So that is my thinking, though I have never gotten a definite answer from a doctor.
-Matt A
A large placebo-controlled safety study of Serevent referred to as Salmeterol Multi-center Asthma Research Trial (SMART) was started in July 1996, after the FDA received reports of several asthma deaths associated with the use of Serevent Inhalation Aerosol, and after studies raised concern about the regular use of short-acting and long-acting beta-agonists. In early 2003, GlaxoSmithKline announced that it was stopping the SMART study after an interim analysis revealed an increased risk of asthma-related deaths and life threatening episodes among patients given the drug (13 deaths out of 13,176 patients treated for 28 weeks versus, 3 of 13,179 for those on placebo). The FDA says that further analysis of the data suggests that the risk might be greater in African-Americans. A previous study has reported that 36 patients who used Serevent died or suffered serious but not fatal asthma attacks.
The deaths were related to the use of severent. The warning is on Serevent, Advair, Symbicort and Fordil inhalers. The FDA concluded that benefits were greater then the risk so the medications were not pulled.
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