Asthma Medication Treatment - Quick Relief And Long Term

Asthma is an incurable disease. Therefore, the various medications and precautions can only be used for managing it. Asthma medication treatment is of two types. One of these is used for providing quick relief and the other is used for long-term asthma control. Details of these two types of asthma medications are provided below.

Quick relief medications are used as rescue operations after patients have suffered an asthma attack. These rescue drugs work in the shortest possible time frame and open up the constricted bronchial airways. The drug of choice used as quick-relief asthma medication is albuterol, which is one of the quickest acting beta-adrenergic agonist bronchodilators available currently in the market.

Bronchodilators are a class of medications that directly stimulate beta-adrenergic receptors to dilate the bronchial airways. Bronchodilator medication behaviour is to act primarily on beta-adrenergic receptors. The latter are found on the cells in lungs.

Use of some of these bronchodilator medications, such as epinephrine, results in side effects. Such side effects include anxiety, muscle tremors, headache, and rapid heartbeat. Bronchodilators such as albuterol do not have any significant side effects as they do not affect other organs in the body. They therefore form safe drugs in treatments for children too. Another class of quick relief asthma medications is that of anticholinergics. These are also used as rescue medications for quick relief to asthma patients during asthma attacks. Anticholinergics have one advantage over bronchodilators. They last longer than bronchodilators in their action. However, anticholinergics have one downside vis-a -vis bronchodilators. They take longer to achieve the same effect as that achieved with bronchodilators. In view of the mutual pros and cons, the two drugs are often used in combined form to obtain the advantages of both at the same time. Ipratropium bromide is the only anticholinergic medication used mostly in combination with albuterol to relieve beta-blocker induced bronchospasm. Patients who are sensitive to beta2 agonists can be prescribed ipratropium bromide. However, it is hardly used by itself for quick relief of asthma symptoms. Besides the quick relief asthma medications, the other category includes drugs used for the long-term control of asthma related inflammation and lung injury. Inflammation is a major issue faced by those asthma patients who have had moderate to severe asthmatic attacks. In such patients, inflammation persists long after the attacks have subsided. Such patients have typically been on beta2 agonist medications in a dose quantum of more than two per week. Preventive medications used to avoid asthma attacks in such patients include corticosteroids in the inhaled form. Other such medications used include leukotriene antagonists and cromolyn. Different combinations of medications such as steroids with beta2 agonists or steroids with leukotriene antagonists are being used. These are for the treatment of or the prevention of future attacks in patients of moderate or severe asthma. Such asthma medication combinations are proving to be quite effective in the achievement of the above objective.

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