Welcome to our December research update! Getting involved with research is an important way to impact asthma and allergy treatments, education, and awareness.

This month, we are highlighting clinical trials, surveys, and news on:

• Chronic hives triggered by sunlight (solar urticaria)
• The impacts of the changing inhaler market on people with chronic lung disease
• Long-term exposure to particulate matter and asthma
  
  

Note: The links below will take you to external websites.

Latest Asthma and Allergy News

Asthma

The Effects of Inhaler Market Changes on People with Chronic Lung Disease
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affect 545 million people worldwide and about 34 million people in the United States. People in the United States with these chronic lung conditions spend about $4,000 out-of-pocket each year.

A recent study found major challenges that people living with asthma and COPD face because of changes to the inhaler market. These challenges include:

• Rising medicine costs
• Discontinued branded medicines
• Lack of insurance coverage for generics
• Medicine shortages
  
  

Insurance policies also force non-medical switches in medicine or devices.

For health care providers, more administrative work, inhaler denials, and limits on prescribing suitable treatments create major challenges. These challenges can reduce patient trust and increase the burden of asthma and COPD care.

Asthma Visits are More Common After Flovent Discontinuation
Flovent, a prescription inhaled corticosteroid, was discontinued on Jan. 1, 2024. Before being discontinued, it was used for the long-term treatment of asthma in people aged 4 and older. After its discontinuation, people who used Flovent were directed to generic options. But people were concerned about insurance coverage and effectiveness.

To study the impact of Flovent’s discontinuation, researchers looked at emergency department (ED) visits, hospital admissions, and ICU stays for over 3 million people who were prescribed fluticasone propionate in the first (Q1) and second (Q2) quarters of 2024. Compared to the same periods in 2022 and 2023, asthma-related hospital admissions increased by 17.5% in Q1 and 24.1% in Q2. ICU admissions rose 17.4% in Q1 and 21.3% in Q2. ED visits saw smaller increases, up 6.5% in Q1 and 3.6% in Q2.

These findings suggest that the discontinuation of Flovent may have contributed to higher rates of severe asthma episodes. This highlights challenges people face with medicine transitions. But more research is needed to understand the long-term impacts of the discontinuation.

The Impact of Long-Term Exposure to Air Pollution on Asthma
Asthma affects over 250 million people worldwide. Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a major risk factor. Particulate matter is usually found in polluted air. A recent study combined data from reviews and analyses to look at the impact of particulate matter exposure on asthma risk. In this study, risk was defined by the number of total asthma cases, new asthma cases, and asthma deaths.

The review found that asthma risk rises by 21.4% in children and 7.1% in adults for every 10 micrograms per cubic meter of an increase in particulate matter. The researchers also believe that in 2019 nearly 1/3 of global asthma cases were linked to particulate matter exposure.

These findings highlight the major role of air pollution in asthma prevalence and stress the need for stronger efforts to reduce particulate matter levels worldwide.