Steroids Blog

According to a research conducted at the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, black teens are three times more likely to have steroid-resistant asthma than their white counterparts.

The research revealed that the African-American Children were more likely to develop steroid-resistant asthma than the white teens, as per Joseph Spahn, M.D., a pediatric allergist and director of the Immunopharmacology Lab at National Jewish.

Other recent epidemiological studies found that black teenagers with asthma are found to be sicker and tend to have a high mortality rate than white teenagers with asthma. It was also revealed that inhaled steroids can be one of the most effective ways in controlling asthma.

From News.Bio-Medicine.Org:

“Our results suggest that children with steroid-resistant asthma are more likely to be African-American, to have required treatment with oral steroids at an earlier age and to require larger amounts of oral steroids for only marginal control of their asthma,” said Joseph Spahn, M.D., a pediatric allergist and director of the Immunopharmacology Lab at National Jewish.

Other recent epidemiological studies have shown that blacks with asthma are sicker and have a higher mortality rate than whites with asthma. Doctors at National Jewish now are trying to determine whether blacks have a more vigorous immune response to airway inflammation–which means that higher doses of steroids must be used to control inflammation–or a poor response to steroids secondary to a genetic resistance to the drugs.

“The theory is that with ongoing airway inflammation you get worsening asthma and diminished steroid sensitivity,” Dr. Spahn said.

This study of 164 teen-agers treated at National Jewish also showed that 25 percent of the group was steroid resistant. Children with less than a 15 percent improvement in lung function following a “burst” of inhaled steroids–high doses over seven days–were considered steroid resistant.

“Twenty-five percent of the kids admitted to National Jewish have steroid-resistant asthma, which is much greater than anyone thought,” Dr. Spahn said.

Further Studies are undergoing to ascertain whether or not the black teens have a more vigorous immune response to airway inflammation.

It is believed that only 1/10 of a percent of the fifteen million asthma patients in the United States alone are resistant to steroid therapy while they are approximately five million children with asthma in the United States.

The study is the first one to examine steroid-resistant asthma in children and was published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.