What asthma medicine works best for your child?

Every day at MyAsthmaCentral.com we get lots of asthma related questions. Below are some questions I thought my readers at the RT Cave would enjoy.

Your Question: What asthma medicine will work best for my child?

My humble answer:

What medicine works best for your child is basically a matter of trial and error. What works for one child may not work the same for others. It also depends on how bad your child's asthma is. Another thing that complicates treating childhood asthma is this question: Are the same medicines used to treat adult asthma safe for children? As usual, though, there's a ballance of risk versus benefits when trialing any new asthma medicine.

The basic premise, however is the same for adults as it is for children. Every asthmatic should have a Ventolin inhaler on hand at all times. That's pretty well established. If your child cannot have one on his possession, whichever adult is responsible for him at the time should have one handy (like you or a teacher).

If your child is requiring the Ventolin more than 2-3 times in a two week period, this is considered uncontrolled asthma (in most cases). In this case, he'll want to trial your child on other asthma meds, such as you can read about in this post (while written for adults, it should give you a general idea of what meds are available).

You may also want to consider reading this post , which notes a recent study that shows that most asthmatic children benefited the most from a medicine like Advair or Symbicort due to the fact this medicine treats both the components of asthma: bronchospasm and chronic inflammation.

Actually, to state it simply, the best asthma medicine is whichever one helps your child live a normal active life.

For further information you may want to consider posing this question to your childs pediatrician or asthma doctor.

If you have any further questions email me, or Visit MyAsthmaCentral.com's" Q&A section.