Asthma drug could be a prescription for misery

Asthma can be a debilitating condition. Add allergies to the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for some real misery.

If you or someone you love is in that group, there are some things you can do to improve your condition and your quality of life, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

But first, let me tell you what you definitely don’t want to do: Take more unneeded drugs.

A recent study found that people with severe asthma who have fungal allergies might benefit from taking itraconazole, an anti-fungal drug sold as Sporanox.

I say, not so fast. This is just another case of a treatment that fails to cure, and a drug with side effects that can be as bad as the disease.

I’ve seen some long and ugly lists of side effects before, but this one is especially nasty. The more common side effects of itraconazole include convulsions, fever, vomiting, numbness, irregular heartbeat, fatigue, thirst and more.

In fact, 10 people had to pull of the study because of “adverse” health events – eight of those people who withdrew were taking itraconazole.

When you consider that the test group ultimately had 18 people (versus 23 in the control group), those numbers speak loudly.

Not only that, but according to the study, you need to stay on the drug to keep getting the benefit. Once the trial was over and the drugs stopped flowing, everyone was right back where they started.

But the good news is that there’s a real solution, one so much easier than taking a drug with a litany of unpleasant side effects: Find the allergens that trigger your symptoms, and get them out of your life.

This can be a little tricky for many people, in part because most allergy testing is very superficial and looks for only one type of antibody, usually immunoglobulin E.

That’s probably not enough to get a complete picture of your condition, so be sure to find out what kind of testing methods are being used, and don’t be afraid to insist on better and more definitive tests. Your quality of life is at stake, so speak up.

Once you have a clearer picture of what’s triggering your allergies, you can begin the work of limiting or removing your exposure to it – not popping more pills.