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Tailoring asthma treatment

Happy New Year! I very much hope that Christmas and the New Year finds you well and asthma free.

Tomorrow we are back at the respiratory outpatients clinic at the hospital. Not entirely sure what we're hoping for, but perhaps at least some clarity on the issue of when to give Prednisolone and some insight into whether A's daily preventer medication is likely to be doing anything at all given that she only has asthma attacks after colds and no symptoms whatsoever in between. In the past these appointments haven't been entirely helpful, we'll see.

We've had a fairly good run since the last cluster of attacks. No colds for just over a month and as such life without asthma for a bit. I know I'm speaking too soon, it always happens that way, but you've got to enjoy the good bits however short they are.

Just after Christmas A started on one puff twice a day of Atrovent  to see if it might be useful. I am concerned about throwing another drug randomly at the problem, however there appear to be very little side effects to this drug so for now at least it seems like a reasonable approach. I've read a little recently though, about a growing body of research which aims to tailor drugs to an asthma sufferers'  genetic code. Research using a simple spit test caught my eye this week http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-20931946. It looks particularly promising as I think that most parents wouldn't want to keep loading their kids with drug after drug with no clear idea of which (if any) are doing anything useful. But, for now I guess we just have to continue as we are and hope that something is helping.

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