Science / Medicine : Drug Helpful for Severe Asthma

High-dose injections of the drug triamcinolone can provide dramatic, and sometimes long-lasting, help for people suffering from severe, chronic asthma, New York physicians reported last week. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers at the Montefiore Medical Center gave the drug at various times to 12 patients with a history of hospitalization for severe asthma.

None of the volunteers required hospitalization, three were able to return to work and two felt well enough to resume their studies in school.

But when they were receiving placebo injections and tablets of the steroid prednisone, the standard treatment, there were 21 emergency-room visits and 10 hospitalizations for severe asthma.