Flutiform to compete with Advair & Symbicort?

In my perusal of the health news world today I found this article about a New asthma drug that is probably going to hit the market soon. It's a medicine that will compete with Advair and Symbicort. This is good news, I think, for chronic lungers.

This new medicine is called Futiform. Like Advair and Symbicort, it's a combination dry powder inhaler with both a long acting bronchodilator and a corticosteroid. It seems to be a copy cat medicine with the intent on profiting on the latest craze in asthma medicines that aim to treat both the major components of asthma: bronchospasm and chronic inflammation.

I should mention here that the FDA recommends that if a long-acting bronchodilator is prescribed for asthma an inhaled corticosteroid should also be prescribed to treat the underlying chronic inflammation of the air passages in the lungs.

In this sense, combination inhalers such as Advair and Symbicort are a recommended and common treatment for asthma. And, perhaps soon, we can even add Futiform to this list.

The interesting thing here is that while Futiform is a new medicine per se, neither of the medicines it is composed of are new. The corticosteroid in Futiform is Flovent, the same corticosteroid that is in Advair. The long-acting bronchodilator is Formoterol, the same that is in Symbicort.

In my lifelong experimentation with corticosteroids, I have found that none works better than Flovent. My pharmacist insists it's not any better than the other such steroids on the market, but I beg to differ. I have many asthmatic friends who feel the same way.

Serevent, the long acting bronchodilator in Advair, is a medicine I have often wondered about. While I've been using my Advair compliantly for over 2 years, I still have to use my rescue inhaler a few times a day. Of course that's not bad, but it could be better.

Serevent does not provide quick relief for asthmatics, however I have learned that formoterol does. Therefore, and I'm just speculating here, I'm wondering if perhaps formoterol is a better medicine than Serevent.

Thus, I'm wondering if this new medicine combines the best corticosteroid (Flovent) with the best long-acting bronchodilator (formoterol). If that's the case, this product should do pretty well in the world market at least until a better medicine is invented.

Of course, like you, my job as a gallant asthmatic is to always be thinking along these positive lines. We are constantly on the look out for that new asthma medicine that might help us get that much better control of our asthma. If nothing else, this "probable" new medicine may provide another option for us chronic lungers to try.

On a side note here, I don't like to be a Guinea pig for new medicines, but both Flovent and Formoterol have been on the market long enough to know they are safe if they are used only as prescribed.

Oh, and one more thing, the article referred to above mentioned something about generic forms of Advair and Symbicort perhaps hitting the market soon. It'll be interesting to see how this option benefits us asthmatics.

Whether or not the generic forms will be as efficatious as the original may always be up to debate, but a lesser expensive Advair and Symbicort might be the best thing to happen to us asthmatics during an economic downturn.

Well, we'll see.