A new study’s findings indicate, difficult-to-control asthma is often the result of people not taking their anti-asthma medication as their doctor prescribed.

Dr. Liam G. Heaney at Queen’s University of Belfast, Northern Ireland and colleagues found, 5% of adults continued to have difficult to control asthma, with persistent symptoms and frequent flare-ups, remaining at high risk of fatal or near-fatal asthma attacks, despite being prescribed high doses of steroids.

While, non-adherence to medication as prescribed contributes to this problem, its prevalence remains unknown. To find out, researchers studied 182-patients who had been referred to the Northern Ireland Regional Difficult Asthma Service. All patients on visiting the clinic the first time denied they were not taking their medicine as prescribe, so non-adherence to anti-asthma therapy was not suspected to be a major issue.

To assess compliance with inhaled corticosteroid therapy (ICT), researchers compared patient prescription to the actual refill usage, using blood plasma prednisolone and cortisol levels for evaluating oral medication adherence.

Of the 182-patients, 35% filled less than half their prescribed inhaled combination therapy (ICT) and were hospitalised three times the previous year, 21% filled more than they prescribed and 45% filled between half and all of the medication prescribed.

Of the 51-asthma patients using oral prednisolone, blood tests showed 45% of them to be non-adherent, and on being confronted, 88% admitted to poor compliance.

Researchers noting their findings in the latest issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine found, women to be most lax in taking their asthma control medication as prescribed.

‘One could speculate that if (patients) took regular preventative therapy (as prescribed) their asthma would probably improve substantially,’ Heaney and colleagues conclude.

The results of the study have been published in the 1st November issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, an official publication of the American Thoracic Society.